Pre-emptive Homesickness
Hi.
I've been meaning to post lately but, well, the problem is I'm kind of in a daze. I have too much to feel so I can't feel anything. Or I don't know what to feel. Excitement, sadness, preemptive homesickness... I leave in four days. Yesterday I turned in my keys to the book cabinet at the place where I teach ESL. Today was my last day at the Holiday Inn. Ever, because even though I'm still on the list of on-call employees, by the time I come back, it won't be a Holiday Inn anymore. It will be a Mariot. The week after I leave, they're doing a whole bunch of new trainings to get everyone ready. Trainings like "food safety" and "customer service" and "the Marriot rewards program." No one wants to go. Except for me. I want to be there just because I want to be a part of it. I want to be there so I can complain about it with my fellow employees. So I can whisper with them in the break room about how stupid it all is, and bitch and moan that we only get paid minimum wage to attend (the tip pool doesn't kick in for trianings). Lately I romanticize anything that makes me feel like part of a community...
Please don't misunderstand me--I have no desire to cancel my trip. I'm thrilled to be going, and I know I'm very lucky to have the opportunity. I'm just also sad about what I'll be missing, sad at what I might be leaving behind. And I know that I can't guarantee that things will be the same when I come back... you can never stand in the same river twice, or whatever that saying is.
I also realize I've made a terrible mistake. Perhaps a necessary mistake, perhaps better than the alternative of not making it, but it still freaks me out. I realized this week that I wouldn't have such an intense feeling of loss if I were just leaving the country for six months and coming home. But I'm not. I'm leaving the country for six months, coming home briefly, and then going to grad school. Somewhere else. I'll be starting over again, without even whatever sense of routine and community I manage to build in Nicaragua. And then grad school involves 1-2 quarters in other parts of the world, so I'll only have 9 months to set up a home in Chicago, and then I'll leave again. And then again. And then maybe I will decide to take a job in some other city I've never been to because it's a good job or it advances my career, and I'll have to start over a fifth time... I don't know what will happen. I don't know how long it will be before I feel like I'm "Home" again.
So I am sad. I am ecstatic because of the experiences and the skills and the knowledge that I will acquire, an sha'allah, over the next three years. I'm looking forward to it, and I don't want to give any of it up. It just comes with some hard consequences. Some lonely consequences. And it makes me dream about Jake.
It's a good thing though, that I know all of this in advance. Where I used to get really fucked up was deluding myself into thinking I wasn't affected by things like this, that I didn't miss people, that I didn't get homesick, that I could just uproot myself and start over without caring. So I don't know. The fact that I know in advance parts of it will be hard gives me a bit of confidence. An sha'allah I'll be strong enough to get through those hard parts--and come through it all with some really kick-ass stories.
I've been meaning to post lately but, well, the problem is I'm kind of in a daze. I have too much to feel so I can't feel anything. Or I don't know what to feel. Excitement, sadness, preemptive homesickness... I leave in four days. Yesterday I turned in my keys to the book cabinet at the place where I teach ESL. Today was my last day at the Holiday Inn. Ever, because even though I'm still on the list of on-call employees, by the time I come back, it won't be a Holiday Inn anymore. It will be a Mariot. The week after I leave, they're doing a whole bunch of new trainings to get everyone ready. Trainings like "food safety" and "customer service" and "the Marriot rewards program." No one wants to go. Except for me. I want to be there just because I want to be a part of it. I want to be there so I can complain about it with my fellow employees. So I can whisper with them in the break room about how stupid it all is, and bitch and moan that we only get paid minimum wage to attend (the tip pool doesn't kick in for trianings). Lately I romanticize anything that makes me feel like part of a community...
Please don't misunderstand me--I have no desire to cancel my trip. I'm thrilled to be going, and I know I'm very lucky to have the opportunity. I'm just also sad about what I'll be missing, sad at what I might be leaving behind. And I know that I can't guarantee that things will be the same when I come back... you can never stand in the same river twice, or whatever that saying is.
I also realize I've made a terrible mistake. Perhaps a necessary mistake, perhaps better than the alternative of not making it, but it still freaks me out. I realized this week that I wouldn't have such an intense feeling of loss if I were just leaving the country for six months and coming home. But I'm not. I'm leaving the country for six months, coming home briefly, and then going to grad school. Somewhere else. I'll be starting over again, without even whatever sense of routine and community I manage to build in Nicaragua. And then grad school involves 1-2 quarters in other parts of the world, so I'll only have 9 months to set up a home in Chicago, and then I'll leave again. And then again. And then maybe I will decide to take a job in some other city I've never been to because it's a good job or it advances my career, and I'll have to start over a fifth time... I don't know what will happen. I don't know how long it will be before I feel like I'm "Home" again.
So I am sad. I am ecstatic because of the experiences and the skills and the knowledge that I will acquire, an sha'allah, over the next three years. I'm looking forward to it, and I don't want to give any of it up. It just comes with some hard consequences. Some lonely consequences. And it makes me dream about Jake.
It's a good thing though, that I know all of this in advance. Where I used to get really fucked up was deluding myself into thinking I wasn't affected by things like this, that I didn't miss people, that I didn't get homesick, that I could just uproot myself and start over without caring. So I don't know. The fact that I know in advance parts of it will be hard gives me a bit of confidence. An sha'allah I'll be strong enough to get through those hard parts--and come through it all with some really kick-ass stories.