Transitions: or crises, coffee, and contemplation

I'm starting school tomorrow.

I went shopping for school supplies today, and came out with some notebooks, a couple binders, a pencil case, some pens, pencils, and highlighters. I had completely forgotten how to back to school shop. I realized I didn't even have a backpack big enough to hold said binders.

I've been missing Paris lately. It's strange, how something can become one's whole life, an integral part of one's identity, the first thing one has in their back pocket to separate themselves from their surroundings, so quickly. And so reversibly. I cultivated a life in Paris, and met my soul mates between sips of good red wine and a river lit up by irreplaceable lights. I became a mother to a child I would miss like a daughter, and I hung the city's map on my wall so I would be able to memorize the nuances of every bend in the metro system and every monument in each arrondissement.

And then it all dissipated. And I was left back here, where I'd started, a completely different human being, in an environment all too familiar after being lost in foreign places for a year. I moved back in to my childhood bedroom, reunited with my best friends, visited my neighbourhood Starbucks, and got a job. I tried to attack life back home with the same fervour I'd traveled Europe with, and left little time for contemplation or reflection. But I had overgrown my tiny bedroom, and the streets I'd walked before the cobbles of Budapest and the fields of Edinburgh, and it all felt so small. 

So it crept up on me, this date which will arrive tomorrow. And I know, once this new chapter has begun - the train pulling out of the station like the one that carried me from Brussels to Bruges without a plan - I will be able to move, and grow. I will be altered again, meeting new kindred spirits and learning things that will change my views once more. Humans are not static creatures.

But for now, I sit here in bed, thinking I should probably get to sleep early, drinking tea at eleven p.m., wondering who I will meet tomorrow and wishing away this transition period of long commutes and part-time jobs and scattered friends around the world like fairy dust.

I guess I'll treat this new adventure like hopping on a plane to Germany: utterly terrified, full of useless plans, pictured scenarios, and a whole lot of hope.

Happy September First.

Love always,

Coral