Saturday, May 1, 2010

Today is the two month mark



Two months from now I will be in London, gearing for my trip home to the United States of America.

It seems unreal that this experience, this way of life with which I have become completely enamored over the past eight months will be a memory in two short months.

This ten month period, for which I have been planning, dreaming, scheming, preparing and waiting since 8th grade will be over.  This is a turning point. To me, this is where my Real Life begins.

My Real Life has been in the making for sometime.  I have grades and records and accomplishments that will follow me and will weigh heavily on my Real Life.  However, my return "home" marks the moment where my childhood ambitions and outline ends; here is where things begin to hold new sorts of dimensions.  I am entering a world where I am viewed completely differently.

My 21st birthday is four days after I re-enter the States.  This transformation couldn't have more physical manifestations if I had planned it.  I don't mean to say that the moment I get to Chicago, or MI or SLC I will be a bona-fide adult with an 401K and stock portfolio.  But more, that all the things I have been planning since a young girl (sauf getting my own house and husband and other items that still seem too far off to contemplate) will have been checked off, documented and filed away in the container which holds all that is me.

It would be now that I am making Part B.  I am entering that new phase where I have to start over.  I am rebuilding my life goals, dreams and sense of self.  In essence, my life no longer holds internships and summer jobs but is lengthened into careers and investments.

This isn't something I shy away from and I think can thank France for that in a large part.  This eight months has poked me in my ticklish and weak places. I have been exposed to enough to know I am utterly ignorant and I like it.  I learned enough about ME to step up and face that youth, ignorance, inexperience, and general incompetence.

How do I feel at the end of the day? A mélange of things, but they might overall be described as restlessness or anger.  Why couldn't I have been more prepared for this year in matters of self? I am eager and anxious to experience life and all that I have brewing in the furthest reaches of my conscience.

As I look at the calendar and see all this things I could have, thought I would have done this past year I want to collapse.  But then I think of returning to SLC.

Ahhhh, here's where I get those basic and instinctual feelings of being human.  I am for once going back, back to something familiar and easy.  I am going to return with a tremendously different way of entering and interacting in situations.  How different will SLC look to me? How AMERICAN will it and all my people seem.  Talk about a roller-coaster, I am going to have to re-learn all their names at least.

I don't want to go "home". But there isn't anywhere else to go.  Except forward and yadda yadda yadda. Now I am going to study.  It is a satisfying way to spend the last 60 days you have in a place you love and never want to leave. Wait......no it isn't.


Outside l'IEP (my school) in the sunshine
Claire Foncée

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