Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Facing Change

There are so many things that I want to write about.  So many different ideas but the one that has been haunting me the most lately is just the adjustment that I will be encountering soon.  Last night I went to meet one of my American friends who went home today.  She was very excited about going home but as you always feel, she had a bit of a tear in her eye for all the friends and connections that she would be leaving behind.

Memoirs of America
The other night I had a dream about going home.  My friends and family are counting down the days to my return and after talking to my grandma who was planning every detail once my flight landed, I couldn't help but dream of it.  In my dream I got home and we were having our annual county fair.  My uncle went to pick me up from the airport and we stopped at the fair for a few minutes.  One of my Jordanian friends was sitting at the booth were the judges set and once I saw him I got so confused, but at the same time I was surprised.  Then my uncle and I had to leave before I could talk to my friend and we were driving around the city and even though it was my hometown, I felt so strange in it.  Like, that part of me was only a memory and everything that I knew was locked away in another world.  I started to go through reverse culture shock.  This life was no long my life and now all these people who where around me were just part of my previous life and could not relate to who I am--currently.  The rest of the dream was me trying to get back to any bit of comfort that I could find in my Jordanian friends.

In the dream I kept thinking that I was still in Jordan but I was trying to convince myself that I was actually in America.  It all seemed so strange to me.  But once I actually woke up, I was still in Jordan.  It was such a trip on my emotions.  It's amazing how my body can so easily be transferred to a different place by a few hours in an airplane.  Yet, it takes weeks if not months for my mind and dreams to adjust.  I know that with every experience I go through a part of me will change--hopefully for the better--but change causes differences and distance with people.  When you go to college you don't connect with your high school friends like you once did.  Once you lived abroad for a year or as my friends do, four years, it makes it a completely different when you return home.  Your experiences are all different and in the beginning, often we just long to have someone there who is just a constant--thus represented by my Jordanian friend in my dream.

New friends in Jordan
I talk to my friends and family and they are so happy that I will be coming home soon.  They are planning out everything and we're figuring out dates, but at the same time, my friends here have just numbed themselves to the idea that I will be leaving them.  I asked one of them today what will happen when I leave and they replied simply that they don't think about it as a way of hoping that the end will be different then what we know it will be.  Everyone asks if I'm coming back and I tell them yes, but it doesn't mean that life will be the same as it is not when I come back.  Change can be hard.  Especially abrupt change, but yet we still have to go through it.  If we don't change then we don't grow.  It's inevitable.