Saturday, March 19, 2016

101 Days

I have 101 days

I have 101 days to use that random free hour on Friday to find a new bakery, or maybe an old favorite (although the concentration of bakeries in Trieste means that I never run out of new ones), and bask in the delightful simplicity of a €1 brioche.

101 days to force Meg to take photos with her full face(if we can stop laughing long enough for a photo), 101 days to finish "The List" with Gaia even though we are absolutely terrible at crossing any of the items on our "Bucket List" off, 101 days to make the most of the fact that only a €4.75 train ticket separates Quinn and I from being crazy foreigners exploring Italy together.

101 days to don the classic Italian all-black "night out" garb ("I look like I'm going to a funeral, but for some reason in a leather jacket", I declared the first time), and get swept away in music and laughter...an experience that I know all too well is not particularly cohesive to small-town-USA life.

101 days to walk into school excited, because while the lessons may be terribly boring, every day I get to see the people who, 6 short months ago were people that I was afraid to talk to, who 6 months ago watched a strange new girl walk into their class and attempt to introduce herself with nonexistent language skills, who know that to this day, each conversation with me will be a bit broken and require a bit more effort, but who choose to talk to me anyway. A family which I have come to appreciate to no end.



I have a countdown calendar on my phone set to "July 5". That date is the single thing in the near future that I am most looking forward to, and the single thing that I dread the most. Every particle of my being wants to see the people in my Californian life that I've learned to appreciate so much, to sprawl on the couch in a way that one can only do when they are truly at home. But at the same time, every particle of me wants to stay here and be the person that I've become in the life that I've created with these people that I love in a place that I've internalized............forever.

I left California with my heart more or less in one piece, but I have since allowed it be ripped into pieces that have been scattered among people and places on the other side of the world. I have ripped my heart with only the fragile hope that the pieces have not, in fact, been torn beyond repair, but instead will slowly heal---never to be one complete organ ever again...to be always longing for the other pieces, but for each resilient piece to be beating, to be alive. They say home is where the heart is, but if the heart is scattered, do you have multiple homes, or are you never truly home?

The first sentence of this post is "I have 101 days." That, and nothing more. When I say, "I have 101 days until I go home", my soul constricts because it knows that I have tangled it too tightly in the life that I have built here to truly call just one place home. It knows that when I go, it, like my heart, won't have the comfortable liberty of leaving in one piece.

And this is the price that I have paid, am paying, will pay, for this opportunity. I have gained so much beauty, so much experience, so much vitality in these short months, and I will undoubtably take a piece of this home with me....but I cannot take a piece of this life with me without leaving a piece of myself in this life. And this is a thing of wonder, a thing that terrifies me, a thing that makes me want to run away from it all, but always, always, makes me want to return, to explore, to be alive in the truest sense of the word.

I have 101 days.