For as much as I absolutely love it, the experience of changing location [and the lurch I find myself in during the days before I move] terrifies me. I've said far too many goodbyes over the past few days, and the weight of the future au revoir's is starting to overwhelm me. I am not ready to leave this city, region, or country. Saturday night I went to nº 23, where I said goodbye to two of my better "French friends." Beer, crying, dancing, smiling, laughing, shouting, hugging, kissing, more dancing and laughing, and finally we faded into the roar of the dancing crowd. It still hasn't really set in.
Lately I've been feeling like something of a trampoline. Or, something that hopes it is lucky enough to have the same characeristics as a trampoline. Every bit of me feels like its being tugged in a hundred different directions. I'm incredibly tense, but keeping it together. I feel the weight and power it has over me, but this tension is firm and not going anywhere. I've been able to spring back into shape after the blows I've been dealt most recently. My head would probably even stay on straight if I were confronted with more than I am handling now. But let's not test that theory, not just yet...
I'm also feeling like life is something of an accordion, and I am at the end of the longest "inhale" that my particular instrument has ever experienced. The bellows can handle no more, a rip or tear is almost imminent. I say inhale, instead of exhale, for a reason. Holding my breath in a car while driving through a tunnel has become almost second nature. But sometimes that driver in front of you is going so, so, so slow, or the tunnel is so, so, so long, and all I can do to hold on to the wheel is inhale the tiniest bits of oxygen in order to be able to tell myself I'm not "cheating" on this self-imposed breath-holding game.
I have been holding my breath for a very, very long time.
This impending exhale will be one of tornado-like force, and waterspout-like beauty. Nothing will be destroyed, per se, but landscapes will change rapidly and everything will look the same but feel different. And the notes from the accordion will be a beautiful release that will most surely flow into another inhale.
Leaving places is never easy for me. I wish I could just... be content. I feel better when I'm in motion, even if I'm only moving for the same of motion itself. Gah, I miss my bicycle. Being in such a different culture for so long has revealed to me many aspects of being an American that I absolutely love. I can't wait to be home and explore those aspects of life.
Studying abroad has, in some ways, felt like living on the moon. The most beautiful landscapes I've ever known. As a child, I never imagined being able to actually live here, especially not for as long as I've had the chance to. But here I am, on the moon, which is fully-inhabitable, despite my original fears. I'm looking out at the other stars, and they're not so far. But to get to them I've got to leave here, and, more importantly, take myself even farther away from home. My heartstrings are so tied to Oregon, to the idea of "home" that it represents in my mind. But at the same time, I've got to know what else is out there. My heart will never be content if I don't reach as far as I can.
A week from today I will no longer be Poitevine. Well, I'll always be Poitevine, but my residency will return to Oregonian, and after a few weeks of limbo, my feet will feel Oregon soil beneath them.
