It’s been a month since I got home after my year-long exchange in Italy. And I’m feeling...it’s hard to find a good word for it. Lost might work, if I didn’t have a newfound and more defined sense of direction. Homesick would work if I could feel home sick and have my homesickness be cured at the same time. Misplaced, might be the closest fit. But I haven’t been dump in an alien place. I’m back in the city I had always lived in, with the parents who raised me and the brother I grew up next to.
The initial shock of being back is wearing off. I catch myself starting a sentence in Italian less and less. I have rhythms and habits again, a routine. My readaption has been partially expedited by the fact that I just feel overwhelmed with how much I have to do. I have college applications to write, visits to plan, summer coursework for my upcoming summer year, and trying to see as many of the people I missed for the last year.
It’s really hard staying in touch with everyone from this past year. Almost impossible. No matter how much you want to, there are simply too many people that you love and in the end losing touch is a natural part of this journey. Not that I haven’t tried. Not that I haven’t been successful. I’ve skyped, and texted and snapchatted and facebooked and anything else you can think of with almost everyone at least once since coming home. And I have dear friends that I will stay in contact with for the rest of my life. People I want at my wedding, and will go visit, and host them here.
But another part of this experience is realizing that your life isn’t over. This is something I talked at length about, many times, with one of my best friends, a Brazilian girl who was placed in my town. Leaving this life feels like a little death. You have to say a final feeling goodbye to everyone who made up the pieces of your everyday life for a year. Of course, compared to death the outcome is much sweeter, a reunion with friends and family who love you and you love them. And you can keep in contact with the people to whom you bid adieu.
Actually, one of the phenomena of completing a foreign exchange today, is that it can feel like its not really over. Reality doesn’t really slap you in the face when you come home. Instead you feel like you’re dreaming. This is caused by the contact we can keep. For me, it was three weeks before I didn’t grab my phone to text my friends about plans before realizing we were seperated by all of North American and the Atlantic. Now it’s more of a constant back of your head knowledge kind of thing.
I miss so many things I didn’t expect to miss. Like the gum. At first I asked my mom to send me gum because Italian gum had so much menthol flavor, which didn’t last more than five minutes. Now I can’t stomach American gum. I just can’t. And let’s not even mention pizza.
I’m gonna talk in more detail about what it was like to leave and arrive and everything, and I have videos almost ready to post. And I’m slowly accepting that I am a returnee, so that’s that for now.
