Playful Rooted

I can’t believe this day is here. In my weakest moments, it seemed like it would never arrive, and in my moments of triumph and profound happiness, it seemed to rush nearer and nearer with malicious speed. And today, now that today is here, I feel both happy and sad, both deeply mournful and incredibly excited.

I read this piece in Thought Catalog several months ago called What Happens When You Live Abroad, and I’ve held onto this quote since:

So you look at your life, and the two countries that hold it, and realize that you are now two distinct people. As much as your countries represent and fulfill different parts of you and what you enjoy about life, as much as you have formed unbreakable bonds with people you love in both places, as much as you feel truly at home in either one, so you are divided in two. For the rest of your life, or at least it feels this way, you will spend your time in one naggingly longing for the other, and waiting until you can get back for at least a few weeks and dive back into the person you were back there. It takes so much to carve out a new life for yourself somewhere new, and it can’t die simply because you’ve moved over a few time zones.

I really don’t know what the future holds for us, but I know our lives will be forever different because of everything we experienced this year. And it’s probably true that we will feel at least somewhat divided, and we’ll miss those parts of our personalities that shone through, some for the first time, these past 12 months. As ready as we are to start our ‘real life,’ I know we’ll miss our life, our friends, and the people we were here.

Either way, today I feel so freaking lucky that we got to live, for one solid, trying, amazing year, in the south of France. And I feel so freaking lucky that today… we’re going home.

See ya in the States, baby.

French expression of the day
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – The more things change, the more they stay the same (literally: More it changes, more it’s the same thing)