4 days left
so I'm home and I feel so inept to speak. I don't know where to begin this. I feel like a brat in someways, so foolish and I regret wanting to come home july 15th instead of august 1st so I could see my home, my family and friends, when right now all I want to do it go back to France, but I know that France's dream world was my real life, only for a year- and that's the contract I took, pulled, and made. It is so odd being home. Last night around 2 am I sat at the river in st. charles looking out into the stars and then onto the river as the streetlights reflected into a place I used to know. In that moment a million thoughts rushed through my head. I don't even know how or what I feel anymore. I just want to get away from Elgin and I have only been here for about three weeks now.
Nothing here at home is how I expected or hoped it to be. Everyday seems to be a surprise, a discovery. It is just hard to have dreamt of home while I was away for a year and then to actually come home. I idealized Elgin just because I was so far away and as much as everyone told me, "you are going to be home sick for France when you return back to America." I never really believed I'd feel like this, because I know I'm going to return to France soon, but in these past few days it has really sunk in that my year in France is over and there will never be anything quite like that again. Throughout all my friends loves and wishes now that I have returned back, I sat home the monday after my return, lying in my hamock, listening to the crickets rustle between the grass at night, and I just started crying. I felt so odd.
I don't know who to talk to or what to say because I feel that very few people understand or relate or even want to listen and if I talk about France all the time I feel rude and annoying. France was my life for a year and is always going to be a part of my life now..... and I fear that I talk too much about it at this moment. I wish a plane would just sweep me off of my feet or do something to me in hopes of finding a new subject to sink my teeth into. Perhaps I am simply being a downer. I just do not feel really excited to go to school. My seneses are foreign here, in this place I once called home. I want to ride my bike to the grocery store, run across the sand at the beach, watch the stars brillantly glimmer in the sky, eat my host mom's summer salad, drink wine and party without worrying whether the cops are on the way, I want to speak a foreign language where there are no swears or rude comments to hear, no cutdowns to make people feel like shit or worthless and unsatisfied, I want to feel weightless and free and careless.... I don't want to worry, or be upset or let down or frustrated. maybe I should just wake up. No one in France ever had a reason to get upset with me, to tell me I've changed or that they feel I'm not the person they once knew.. because they all only knew me for the girl they met then, that is who I was always to them and they were content in that.
I feel that I no longer know how to speak English correctly and sometimes I say stupid things or make an idiot out of myself..... like calling places and slipping in French words, or thinking in french and wanting to say my sentences in French, but instead my thoughts in my mind just flow.. and my words come out incorrectly in english. I say things I don't want to say or I say things incorrectly that sound not at all like me. Sometimes I just want to hit myself, but I understand that eventually this all is going to fade, however I feel sorry for the people around me. Through all the people that want to get together or that just randomly stop over at my house to say hi, I still feel somewhat alone. I love seeing everyone and catching up but I hate that my time is so short and that I see everyone just once.. and there's no time for a second or third get together because someone else calls and we all want to talk about there year and my year and the next year. It is hard for me. This is hard for me. I'll go out to dinner with someone I used to be soo close to... and we haven't seen eachother for so long, and heaven knows we should have tons of things to talk about, yet my heart feels a little less pitter patter and I feel more and more unsure. With some friends I have found that it is hard to find the ties anymore, the conversations we once had, laughing on the floors, cheeks red in a furry of excitement are now quiet and blank. We all change though and no once can alter that fact. There are people I never really talked to before, that somehow I can pick up a conversation with now and ride off into the sunset. There stories make me smile and our instant connection make me question why we never shared words before, although I am happy in the moment, now... as we speak.
Coming home I felt as though my life was starting all over again and I just want to get it right this time around. Some parts of my life I once held so steady now feel entirely broken and that for me is scary. It's quite easy to become idealistic from afar, but on the return we catch everything and everyone for what and who they truly are.
Nothing here at home is how I expected or hoped it to be. Everyday seems to be a surprise, a discovery. It is just hard to have dreamt of home while I was away for a year and then to actually come home. I idealized Elgin just because I was so far away and as much as everyone told me, "you are going to be home sick for France when you return back to America." I never really believed I'd feel like this, because I know I'm going to return to France soon, but in these past few days it has really sunk in that my year in France is over and there will never be anything quite like that again. Throughout all my friends loves and wishes now that I have returned back, I sat home the monday after my return, lying in my hamock, listening to the crickets rustle between the grass at night, and I just started crying. I felt so odd.
I don't know who to talk to or what to say because I feel that very few people understand or relate or even want to listen and if I talk about France all the time I feel rude and annoying. France was my life for a year and is always going to be a part of my life now..... and I fear that I talk too much about it at this moment. I wish a plane would just sweep me off of my feet or do something to me in hopes of finding a new subject to sink my teeth into. Perhaps I am simply being a downer. I just do not feel really excited to go to school. My seneses are foreign here, in this place I once called home. I want to ride my bike to the grocery store, run across the sand at the beach, watch the stars brillantly glimmer in the sky, eat my host mom's summer salad, drink wine and party without worrying whether the cops are on the way, I want to speak a foreign language where there are no swears or rude comments to hear, no cutdowns to make people feel like shit or worthless and unsatisfied, I want to feel weightless and free and careless.... I don't want to worry, or be upset or let down or frustrated. maybe I should just wake up. No one in France ever had a reason to get upset with me, to tell me I've changed or that they feel I'm not the person they once knew.. because they all only knew me for the girl they met then, that is who I was always to them and they were content in that.
I feel that I no longer know how to speak English correctly and sometimes I say stupid things or make an idiot out of myself..... like calling places and slipping in French words, or thinking in french and wanting to say my sentences in French, but instead my thoughts in my mind just flow.. and my words come out incorrectly in english. I say things I don't want to say or I say things incorrectly that sound not at all like me. Sometimes I just want to hit myself, but I understand that eventually this all is going to fade, however I feel sorry for the people around me. Through all the people that want to get together or that just randomly stop over at my house to say hi, I still feel somewhat alone. I love seeing everyone and catching up but I hate that my time is so short and that I see everyone just once.. and there's no time for a second or third get together because someone else calls and we all want to talk about there year and my year and the next year. It is hard for me. This is hard for me. I'll go out to dinner with someone I used to be soo close to... and we haven't seen eachother for so long, and heaven knows we should have tons of things to talk about, yet my heart feels a little less pitter patter and I feel more and more unsure. With some friends I have found that it is hard to find the ties anymore, the conversations we once had, laughing on the floors, cheeks red in a furry of excitement are now quiet and blank. We all change though and no once can alter that fact. There are people I never really talked to before, that somehow I can pick up a conversation with now and ride off into the sunset. There stories make me smile and our instant connection make me question why we never shared words before, although I am happy in the moment, now... as we speak.
Coming home I felt as though my life was starting all over again and I just want to get it right this time around. Some parts of my life I once held so steady now feel entirely broken and that for me is scary. It's quite easy to become idealistic from afar, but on the return we catch everything and everyone for what and who they truly are.