Craziness, Things, and Late Night Conversations

It is complete day three here at Northwestern College. The wind bites more harshly than the shielded mountain valley across the ocean in Lupeni and snow thinly blankets the ground of the flat landscape now surrounding me. I breathe in the cold air and blow it out, viewing the familiar stream of fog that I was so used to seeing inside of my dear Apartment Lucy, which seems like a foreign land compared to here. Where am I?

Reentry: it’s difficult. I knew it would be, but I didn’t know what this difficult would feel like. I expected the tiredness that accompanies jet lag and even that things would be different when I returned. I wasn’t expecting it to feel this way. My feelings, expectations, hopes, concerns, and fears are a twisted mess inside of me. On one hand I feel excited to be back, but on the other hand my heart longs for the life that I grew accustomed to this semester. I know that this shall too come to pass, but right now I feel as if I am standing on shifting sand. Kadie gave us a quote during our reentry seminar in our cozy Cabana on Straja. It read:  “You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”

 This quotation fits the place I am in right now. I have been blessed during my short time back; I cannot deny this fact. The other evening I spent a few hours playing the game of Things with a group of people, some of whom I know very well and others whom I met for the first time that day. This game supplied uncountable fits of laughter. I have also blessed by a few late night conversations with people that I love. Conversations filled with stories, hopes, fears, and honesty. I am clutching these moments of joy to my heart. They shed light on the dark parts of my perspective of being “home.” I am in the place of re-realizing this place as my home. I must relearn how to best love the people I left here at the beginning of the semester and in turn how to accept love from people here.

I am learning the art of carrying my various homes in my heart, and that even though I can’t live in all of my homes at once; it is possible for them all to live in me.