It's the big changes I have a harder time with. In a few days I'll be moving away from Amsterdam, my home for the past year, and saying goodbye to people who have become deeply important to me, people who were total strangers when I got here, but who are now family. I'm ready to move on and relinquish the title of "au pair," but I'm not ready to give up everything--rather, everyone--that came with that.
The most important thing that I will take with me from this whole experience, though, is the knowledge that it is possible to uproot yourself from your old life and make a new one from scratch in a place thousands of miles away where you don't know a soul. You can make a new life that isn't merely livable, but that enriches your existence immeasurably, gives you a closer look at the world and at yourself, and allows you to love in ways you didn't even know were possible.
But there's a catch. At some point you have to say goodbye. Herein lies my greatest inner conflict: the ever-pressing desire to seek out the unfamiliar versus the struggle and heartbreak of leaving what I know and love. How does one reconcile the two? Just shed a few tears and suck it up, I guess, or stay home and never find out what else is out there.
I'd like to say that it's only the major life changes that I resist, but unfortunately I'm slightly more crazy than that. Here's an example.
When I started my blog just over a year ago, I was a recent college grad flip-flopping around Orange County. Graduation had been more bitter than sweet for me, I was living temporarily in the attic of a house full of strangers, my friends were coming and going, I didn't have a steady job, and I didn't know where (as in, what country) I would be moving to at summer's end.
One of the only constants in my life was the shoes I wore every day. As anyone who lives in Southern California can tell you, the primary sandals of choice for many people are Rainbows, and I'm no exception. When I finished school, I had pretty much worn out my second long-term pair of Rainbows, and when I say worn out I mean there was a hole the size of a golf ball in the heel of each one, and the area for my big toe had literally disappeared, dissolved over time on the hot concrete of sunny Orange County.
The thing is, though, that I kept wearing them. I wore them in this condition almost every day for about 4 months, almost half the surface area of the bottoms of my feet scraping the ground with every step. I wore them around California, in Vegas, even on a June trip to New York, the summer rain and the hot filth of the Manhattan streets creating some kind of grimy crust on my feet that I needed Goo Gone to remove.
I just couldn't give them up. They had molded so perfectly to the shape of my feet (as Rainbows do) and had been with me for so long that they were virtually a part of my body. With a new pair you have to go through that uncomfortable period when the sandal is still stiff, a little too tight. It's that awkward phase when it just doesn't fit, but you hold out, put in the mileage, because you know that eventually it will feel perfect.
So when it got far past the point of ridiculousness, I gave in to a new pair of Rainbows, just like I'm giving in and moving on now to the next phase in my life. It will be uncomfortable at first, and I won't know if it's right, but I know that it will all take shape with time.
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