Hey again!
It’s been a little while and a lot has changed.
That's a sentence I am sure echoes for just about everyone in my cohort.
I’ve moved into a fantastic new apartment in a charming neighborhood in a newbigcity, landed two amazing new roommates, begun meeting some new friends, and started working a challenging new job. Everything is fresh and my life is a puree of Amazon boxes stacked collarbone-high on the front porch, and figuring out how the gas stove works, and after-work walks, and football games, and electricity bills, and wondering if we are allowed up on the roof to tend to our pots of parsley and basil.
Everything is good. I am well.
But a big part of me is mourning.
It hurts to admit that it hurts to be asked every day, by someone new, “How was Spain? Do you miss it?” But that part hurts in a fond sort of way. Endearingly, I say, “Incredible, life-changing, yes, ugh, the tapas…” and another unblemished anecdote canters to mind like an old family video and I mutter something almost incomprehensible about it, about the River or the lack of besitos back on home turf or wandering along the rocks in Asturias and then, as soon as it appeared, it dives away and I will remember that I am at a Cubs game on a Tuesday night with a beer in my hand.
What truly hurts is a feeling that I’ve lost myself. Or, stepped away from myself. At least, away from the self that I flung loose last year. My year in Spain, despite its roaring highs and lows, was spacious. What I mean is that for the first time in four years (or maybe ever), I had the physical, mental, and spiritual time to evaluate my self from afar and within and really get to know her. I had little context or background to parade around; none of that was helpful. To school, to my friends, to my apartment, and to all the places that I frequented in that little city, I could bring only the energy at the core of who I am. And this was an immense gift. I think the people who met me met the "me"-est me I have ever shown to the world. I started writing, for real, something I had dreamt of since I was ten and sat writing my “novel” on loose-leaf paper every afternoon during Silent Reading Time. I cooked a lot and signed up for community things and traveled, alone. My hand was no longer held by an automatic community, and my faith life faltered and faded and then (praise be!) became my own in a way that continues to tug at me and challenge my restless mind today.
If you remember giant parachute day during PE–lifting it and peering underneath at the dark multicolored panels casting pinwheeling shadows over the giddy faces of your classmates as it billowed high, taut–that is what the space of last year felt like. Ballooning.
And it’s taken me a while to understand what’s happening these past weeks, but I think now I know: I am mourning that deflation.
As of late, I have spoken frequently about the loss I have already observed of my speaking ability in Spanish when I do not prioritize language “production” daily, and my desire to maintain friendships and stay connected to Spanish culture. However, what goes unsaid in these light conversations is the loss of self to which I have more recently admitted: in better words, the loss of vibrancy that characterized the self I experienced internally and then presented to everyone around me. My grandpa calls it the sparkle in the eyes, but I know it as this: the knowing of, the gratitude for, and the loving of your self.
But a parachute doesn’t stay deflated and compressed forever. Coming back to something familiar by name but, in practice, brand new, this has been a period of transition, of return–an inevitable one. I am choosing to let the parachute-or-love-of-self billow again in this new time and space, though I acknowledge it will never do so in the luxuriously, gloriously carefree way of this past year when we got to just..skydive, over and over again into unlimited (frankly...obnoxiously unlimited) periods of self-seeking and adventure-chasing. We were unabashed.
But I am undaunted. Starting again was as simple as cooking a lemony rigatoni and running at sunset along the harbor.
Next step: saying a prayer of thanks aloud as I pulled towels out of a dryer for the first time in fifteen months.
Then: making a mental note to remove, “So, what do you do?” from my opening liners and find some substitutes that don’t make me groan.
Reading on the train as the cornfields whiz by. Asking myself in my journal at night the point of showing anyone anything other than that "me"-est me and laughing about the recent moments I haven't. Finally, tonight, opening up the good old WordPad and putting pen to paper again after so long. Writing. Being with. Romanticizing the quotidian mystery because that is what life is made of: the most common of daily things, lined up into a row of regularity, until something (or someone) puffs in and ruffles them up a little.
But those daily things are beautiful, too. It just took another impetus to show up here and write myself through the mourning and feel at peace about those beautiful little things (cositas, I should say) once more–and to recognize ways I can more tenderly love the self that is experiencing them now.
We may not be skydiving on the daily anymore, but there’s a whole medley of other sports to explore. (Weeknight kickball, anyone?)
With love from the lake,
Ellie
Hi! Thanks for your words :)