Re-entry

Today I sit. I sit quietly in the corner of the Starbucks in Kroger, where people smile at me, where they speak English, where the old folks gather to chat over coffee.

Today I observe what’s going on around me. Price is right is on TV, circles of old friends laugh together, I can flush toilet paper, I can understand what I read. Today I have no car, no phone number, no objectives I must accomplish, nothing I must see.

So today I think. I write. I reflect. And maybe I’ll do some work somewhere in the middle.

It still feels like a dream. It still feels surreal. I’m in America. In the last year I’ve been around the world, and now I’m really moving back in with my parents. To Indiana. In Leo.

A year isn’t that long, but at my age, it’s a significant portion of the song I’ve begun singing, of the life I’ve begun living. And in that year I’ve been around the world twice, been to 4 countries and made a home in one where I started a new life. I’ve been immersed in an unfamiliar culture, struggled to learn the language with no teacher, lived outside what’s familiar, been thrown into the unknown, built relationships I will always treasure, seen and experienced so many things that I fear soon I’ll no longer remember.

Yet I know that’s not true. I may be young, but in the few years I’ve lived I’ve learned that things like this affect you, shape you, change you. And those changes aren’t fully realized for quite some time and usually manifest themselves in unexpected ways, through what you say or the things you do. And quite often the one who recognizes them is not you.

For I have been slowly changing over the last year. Well, over the last 22.

Like a frog put in warm water that’s slowly turned up to a boil, I don’t realize, I can’t recognize the ways I’ve changed, the slight nuances in thinking, the ways I’m not the same. On the other hand, those who I haven’t seen in quite some time are like the frog who is dropped into a pot of scalding hot brine. They immediately notice that something’s not right. That something’s different. And they may fight to jump out. The change is uncomfortable. It’s new. It’s not what they’re used to or what they knew to be true.

Now here’s where the analogy breaks down, falls apart, ceases to be the case: The boiling water can kill, both the frog who is oblivious and the one who sees the heat as obvious. Yet the transformations that happen over a period of time are not fatal, not dangerous, and can actually be something sublime.

I’m experienced enough to recognize that I’m not who I was when I left, and neither are you. So as I work through processing what has happened in the last year, I ask for your patience, for your grace, for a listening ear that truly cares.

I may become frustrated with the way things are here, may become overwhelmed by what’s around me and the things I hear. I may become impatient with the lack of care for the larger world out there. I may judge based on my experiences in the last year. I may do all these things, but know it’s not how I want to respond. It’s not the reaction I hope to embody.

But I am human and I don’t fully understand myself now. I don’t recognize the transformation in myself, and the shock at times may leave me not knowing what to think.

So I ask for you patience and pray for grace for myself as I try to understand life as I know it now. Bear with me, please.

And to help me gain insight on what’s happened inside me, I hope to write one story a week about those I’ve had the pleasure to meet and the things I’ve seen.

I will say right now, I know full well the world doesn’t revolve around me, and I never want to act like it does, but in this season I want to recognize and internalize as much as I can from my time away. I don’t want these lessons, these experiences, these changes to go to waste.