Maybe it was Crete, or maybe, after 3 weeks of my sojourn, I’ve finally settled into myself.
I stopped longing and yearning for the things/people I miss from home. Instead, I exist on a day-to-day basis, unburdened by the ailment of this slack, this temporary loss.
Yes, things fall apart, but when I’m melancholy or lonely or ______ (insert pathetic self-pity adjective there), I forget that the shards of these things dissembling, also fall into a new pattern, a new create, a new pile; my life is kaleidoscopic. The constant falling apart and together as the wheel turns, the yarn unraveling and wound.
Much like how time expands and contracts at will. Yes.
Perhaps the loss seems easier for me because I know that this is a sojourn. That on June 3, I’ll be back at home, a slightly different person since this lapse in time saw me in a different place/culture, but perhaps I have gotten used to my solitary life here because I could let go of the fact that I miss _________.
With the comfort of knowing that what I miss would be reinstated back to me (perhaps, but after a month’s worth of expanding and contracting, things never end back up where they were originally. Sometimes closer, sometimes farther, sometimes disappearing off the edge of peripheral vision), I was able to adjust and move on. Kind of like taking tylenol to downplay a virus’ side effects until your natural immune system fully kicks into gear.
I’m not saying it’ll be easier, but knowing that I can do this is comforting. That whatever happens, the loss, whether temporary or real, is the same. Time moves on, and I’ll never forget, really, but my body will move on, and adjust to the new temperature.
Whether or not I like it, I’m a creature of acclimation. But my heart, the cruel thing, never forgets, and remembers, coursing the loss, the gains, the love, over and over again through a body that ages, grows, and learns.
It will be difficult. My chest will hurt, and I may always miss, in this way, this one thing, for the rest of my life. But perhaps I can shelf it. Stow it where it reminds me how I got to be wherever it is that I am. Whether or not I want it. Or like it. I cannot resist anymore.
We endure.
