The past three months, or really the past four or five, have been charged with change, and I don't think I had the time to register these changes until these past couple months in Lyon. In the Spring, I raced around looking for a job after my dream job had ended, when that didn't work out I filled out applications for English programs in French universities (so hopefully I could work on the side and come out with a degree that would make me more competitve for a job as an English teacher) I said goodbye to my assistant friends who left Orléans, was an animatrice at a camp in the south for a month, ran back up to Orléans, flew back out to the US to be with family for a month and to renew my visa, returned to Orléans to say goodbye and pick up some things, and moved to Lyon to start a new (poorer) life as a student.
There are a few sentences that have stuck with me. One of them was when I left Geneva, Jonathan Gosnell, the director of the program said to me:
"Yeah, I've heard people say when they get back to the USA that their life here seems like a dream, they sink back into their old routine and it seems like their time abroad never even happened."
I didn't think anything of it when he said it, but when I got back to the US the summer after Geneva in 2011, I experienced exactly this. In the beginning I hung onto listening to French radio to comfort my return, but after a very short time, the memories became hazy and the life I had lived seemed like some sort of fiction I'd read once or twice and the main character wasn't even someone I related to.
This Summer, when I went back to the US for one zoom-through month, I felt a little different. I knew I was coming back to France, moreover to a different life in France than the one I had had before. I started to fall into my old routine but I knew I wouldn't be able to sink into it for long. Like before, I started to doubt whether my life in France really had ever been real, and further if going back was a good idea. But the self that was in France a week before was so incredibly passionate about saying I tried to leave my present self in the hands of my not-so-distant-past self. I didn't feel like my present self was capable of making informed decisions on it's own, or even of being involved in any decision making. So I tried to live outside of the present as best as I could and to continue on the path I had built for myself before, while still enjoying the time I had with my family. This proved to be very difficult. When I left my family in the airport I felt like I was making a horrible mistake. While I knew that on the other side of the ocean there were things that made me feel like I wanted to pursue the future unlike anything I could find in the US, being apart from my family and friends is never easy. And after living a year mostly in a language that was not my own, and feeling as though my personality would never come through in this other language and other culture in its entirety, time spent in the US felt both good and unfamiliar.
I really expected my time in the US to be a comfort—to know how to make jokes, how to express myself, how to get around, how to follow cultural rules. I think what surprised me was that perhaps my personality wasn't exactly the same anymore. After coming back from a year learning a foreign language, I was quieter, I listened more, I didn't always feel like talking or expressing myself.
I became suddenly aware of the different versions of myself. The different fictions of myself. There was the person who went to Smith, the person who wanted to be a choral conductor, the person who was from the island, the person who lived and taught in Orléans, the person who was going to enroll in a masters in Lyon—and it really hurt not to feel like all these experiences were linked. Like they were all dreamed up.
The first moment I began to feel things come together was when my friend from Geneva, Laurena, came to visit Lyon last weekend. She is one of the small number of people in this world that makes me feel "home." Talking to her makes me feel like I am one whole person, safe and loved and supported for all that I am.
Coming back to Orléans for a week has also definitely jumpstarted the process. At Mariejo and Philippe's house, I feel so among family, so comfortable and happy and feeling as though I'm sucessfully using the language to communicate my true self that is constructed from all my experiences. With Chantal and Stéphane around, I feel even more supported and loved. I feel reminded of why I wanted to stay in France. For the first time, I'm able to think about all the experiences I've had and feel that they are all coming together onto the same pathway.
Sometimes I wonder if it was a mistake to move away from Orléans—it was so much harder than I expected to move away from my family at home and then immediately move away from this family—but I try to tell myself that it's true that in a way my time here had to come to an end. Orléans is a great city, but after my friends left things would have been hard. I wouldn't have liked commuting to the university in Paris. It would have been hard to go through another rainy winter. It would have been hard to get over the little stint of romantic heartbreak that I felt here with the cause of this heartbreak still around. It would have been hard, right? I'm not sure I can really know for sure, yet, but it's good to know that this place is always here, even if I'm not able to continue on here with the job I adored so much. There's something bigger waiting, right? Sometimes you just have to put your time in, right? I hope I'm right. I hope I made the right decision.
I'm so thankful for the support of all those people who are home to me during these times of transition. I'm so thankful to the universe for crossing my path with those of Mariejo, Philippe, Chantal, Stéphane, Ashley, Margaux and her family—the list goes on and on and on—people whose generosity is whole, who make me feel whole and at home. I need to remind myself that people who make me feel far from home are not the people with whom I need to pass my life. I need to spend this life finding more ways home.
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| Château de Cheverny, Chantal took me and the new assistant there yesterday! |
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