Post #37

This is my 37th post. An unremarkable number, really. But tomorrow is the final day of the program that I'm doing here so 37 somehow feels monumental. By 1:30pm tomorrow I will be finished my final presentation and my reason for coming here in the first place will be....well, over.

I had dinner with one of the people I consider something of a mentor here and at one point she asked me what I'd learned about myself over the past four months. I looked at her and then looked out the window and thought about it for a few minutes (I think before I speak sometimes now, it's all very strange) and said, "I don't think I learned anything, I just remembered things I'd kind of forgotten."

I'd forgotten that I am independent, quiet, introspective, shy, brave. I'd forgotten that I'm physically pretty strong and have good balance and can scamper up steep banks and through mud and jump far and climb trees. I'd forgotten that I can get dirty and be cold and survive in the same wardrobe of 12 shirts, two pairs of pants, four pairs of shoes and four sweaters for four months and be really, really happy doing it. I'd forgotten what it's like to only be responsible for myself and, at the same time, actually be responsible for myself. No one picks up my slack. Right now I'm so focused on my final presentation tomorrow that all my dishes are in my sink and all my clothes are in the laundry (literally, I'm borrowing an outfit for tomorrow) and my sheets are a bit smelly frankly and I don't have much in the way of groceries and my hair...my hair is filthy. And I am so incredibly happy knowing that I am responsible for dealing with all of these things. When I slip while I'm hiking, no one catches me. When I need to jump down from the bottom branch of a tree I've climbed, no one offers me a hand. It's not because I'm spending my time with a callous group of jerks who don't care, or that I've spent the past years of my life being babied by everyone around me, it's just that the assumption here is that I will take care of myself.

Tomorrow another short piece of my life ends and another one begins. I will become a resident of these islands (not a local, that takes about 25 years of living here apparently). Oh, I'll still be 'one of the college students' for a long time to come I think, but to myself at least I'll be someone who lives here. A redheaded, freckled, researcher-turned-barista who lives in a town of 945 people and has an empty path before her. She is not the girl I thought I was, she doesn't live in the place I thought I'd live, she doesn't do the things I thought I'd do or love the people I thought I'd love but I love that I am her.

A month or so ago, when things were really hard and really bad, my friend K told me to rebuild myself, but to build myself in myself this time, not in another person or a place. And I think I'm succeeding in that. I feel free, capable of picking up and moving anywhere, of finding a hole in a community and filling it in some meaningful way. I am on my own now.