goodnight and not goodbye

Anonymous

I spent my last afternoon in Rhodes swimming in the Aegean Sea. This morning, I watched the end of the sunrise and I’ll spend my last afternoon in Athens shopping, frantically buying gifts and then enjoying a meal with a community of friends. When I reflect on how amazing this trip has been, and what sets it apart from other experiences I’ve had, I think for the first time, I genuinely don’t want to leave. When I’ve gone abroad before, I have always been ready to come home. Certainly I miss my family and my friends, but I’m not ready to leave, at all. Yesterday in the evening it hit me that I had to go home on Friday and the thought was rather unsettling. I have loved my time in Greece and I don’t feel like I’ve exhausted the country yet. Perhaps it’s also that I am so close to the rest of Europe, I can’t help but want to stay and travel all around. A few weeks in Turkey, a month or so in northern Spain, a week in France, a week or so in London, two weeks in Scotland. I would be content staying in any one of these places for a few months. This is a feeling I just haven’t felt before… and I know it may sound strange to many (there are lots of people in our group who have done a lot of traveling precisely because they love it and would spend far more time traveling if they could) but I don’t normally feel this way. While in Oaxaca, many of my friends who had studied there for the semester weren’t ready to go home at the end, and I couldn’t really understand the feeling. I loved Oaxaca, but I missed my family and wanted to go home. Perhaps I’m just curious as to why, this time, I feel different. Some may say that it’s because this experience has only lasted 3 weeks. Which may be true, but I think it may be a few other things, as well. 

Sometimes it’s liberating to be away from home, and sometimes it makes me feel guilty. Guilty that I miss weddings, bridal showers and baby showers, or am spending so much money, or can’t be there to visit my grandmother or eat dinner with my grandma and grandpa on Sunday nights, or I miss kids' swimming lessons and coffee on Sunday mornings. I know that I largely bring this upon myself, and many people in my life don't want me to feel this way (thank you, mom!), but it still happens. As I get ready to transition into the next phase of my life (the “real” world phase 1) I’m faced with decisions about where to go and what to do. Part of what I’m realizing is that I am strong enough and capable enough to go somewhere else after I graduate, if not now, in a year or two. I’ve been a little fearful that if I stay in the PNW area after I graduate, I may never leave. Not that that would be bad, but it would be bad if the reason that I did so was because of fear or lack of faith in myself to live somewhere else. However, my time in Greece serves as affirmation that there’s more that I want to see and do and experience, and I’m not ready to just go “home”. It may be a while before I can travel internationally again, but I won’t forget the way I feel this morning, genuinely sad to leave this place. I’ll remember what watching the sunrise over the Aegean feels like. When I taste the salt of the sea I’ll remember my swim here, and when I’m chopping garlic up in my kitchen, I’ll be reminded of the way the smell of the garlic of the tzatziki reached my nose before it hit my mouth, and when I hear the sound of traffic, I’ll remember the motos, and the honking horns of the cars outside my apartment window in Athens, and when I drink a strong cup of coffee I and feel the caffeine pumping through my bloodstream, I’ll fondly smile as I think about Greek frappes.

As the words of one of my favorite campfire song goes, this is goodnight and not goodbye, Hellas, I’ll see you again soon.