What am I feeling? Sad. Because the past six months have been so, so irrevocably good to me and I don't want it to end. This means getting back to 'reality', which is admittedly more mundane than jet setting across Europe every few weeks. This lifestyle of unfettered freedom will soon be a thing of the past. Sort of sad because I don't know if anything I ever do will ever match up to this whole experience. What if this is as good as it gets? What if this is, was, and will be the best experience of my life without me knowing it? (Dramatic, I know.) Sort of sad because this moment that is 'now' will all too quickly slip through my fingers and begin its hasty metamorphosis from reality into a memory.
Sad because I think about how much one place means to me and how that meaning will never be translated to the person after me. How my bedroom - a safe haven, the grounds of of late night ideas and the site of budding friendships - will never take on the same shade of meaning to the next person, who won't even have the slightest clue as to my existence and the person I was.
More afraid that I will forget the little things that made up my life. These things were never in any Instagrams or Snapchats but were important all the same - if not even more important. How the sunlight started hitting the foot of my bed and steadily creeped higher as spring made its transition into summer. The view of the office outside my window. The small puff of wind that accompanied the familiar rumble of train tracks. I'm afraid that my life as I know it now, will be reduced to a mere fragment of its true intensity, entirety, wholeness. That I will recall nothing but a sliver of this meaty experience is to do it a severe injustice. Friends who are already back tell me that it feels as if exchange never even happened and that is a right shame.
Sort of afraid to be thrown back into a now foreign environment. I feel like there is so much waiting for me back home - kind of like torrential currents throbbing against a flimsy dam and the moment I return, it's going to go to pieces. Being so far away surely meant I was distanced.
Yet, I am also happy. Happy that I've seen the things I've seen and done the things I've done. These eyes that have studied the curves and spines of the most intricate buildings and soaked in the most vibrant colours to have graced a sky. Thankful for these feet that have taken me to places I would have never imagined. Grateful to have even had this experience at all - which was truly, once in a lifetime. It has been nothing short of amazing and I still cannot fathom how blessed we are in so many ways.
Excited to see my dear friends and my beloved family. Six months is a long time and it will be so nice to finally see them again. I wonder if things have changed - if we have changed. And if so, how? Excited for the future set ahead of me. There is so much left to experience of life and these six months have been but a mere chapter. Who knows what the future holds in store? I'm always the type to think too far ahead, but I just wonder where I'll be in a year from now. What about five, ten, twenty?
I think articulating these feelings has helped me come to terms with this ambivalence. It's sad to end exchange, but it has been such a journey. Copenhagen is beautiful and it will always have a place in my heart, but maybe it's a good time to leave. My experience in Copenhagen was unique because of the people I met there but the expiration date of a journey is also what makes it so special. It was one of a kind. Thanks for the memories, exchange 2015. Maybe I'm just about ready to come home home.