Goodbyes

I’ll keep this short, because I don’t have many words right now for what I’m feeling. I've actually attempted this blog post a few times over the last few days, but was never sure what to write. 

Have had so many goodbyes in the last two days. Not sure I can handle the final ones tonight. Thankfully, many of them have just involved spending quality time together. Best so far—last night my two co-workers and I spontaneously sat up til 1 am together. As Pi A said, if we sit together long into the night, we’ll have the opportunity to say all the things we think and feel that we may not have said. Result= chatting, sharing, joking, and then a little YouTube karaoke just the three of us.

Others have been: Final meetings in hammocks with coffee and mango, paired with good deep discussion. Helping someone with an application all day, going ‘to dinner,’ and ending up with whiskey and karaoke til 2 am. Final walking street with my host sisters. A phone call from the mountains. Many wonderful, unexpected little gift exchanges including an Akha bag, Lisu Doi Chang coffee, and a Crossfit t-shirt (and a Chiang Mai Crossfit banner to bring to the gym in Kzoo).

The result of all these goodbyes has been realizing how many true friends I have, even some that were unexpected. For example, the Thai professor at ISDSI that helped me all last week to finish my translating. After a week of afternoons together, she and I became real friends. She ended up doing it all for free, saying it was to help me, and just asked that I send her some Modge Podge glue from the US.

What I’ve also realized in the last few days is that while half of my ambivalence about leaving is already missing people here, the other half is fear about returning. Part of this is about reintegrating. I know I’ve changed a lot this summer, and while this was also true before, this time my experiences have not only been more intense but they’ve also been alone. Last time I had shared experiences with the friends I was returning back to school with; this time, I’m going to have to integrate myself and my experiences with people who have been in a very different place while I’ve been gone. While I have no doubt my family and many of my closest friends can understand much of this, the same cannot be said for all of the K community. IMPECT to K College is quite a shift in culture, both socially and in terms of work/academics.

I’m also now officially a senior in college, and along with this comes a number of expectations. Before this summer, I could get away with just focusing on my SIP research. I had to get through this experience before tackling whatever else was to lie ahead. But now, the summer is over. I will be starting school in two weeks, and after that there’s just 9 months until I graduate. Along with this comes a whole host of expectations—primarily, the questions about what I plan to do after graduation. People have already started asking. And actually, it’s not that I don’t have an answer. I have a few options that I’d be very happy with. Instead, as I’ve thought more about why it scares me, I think it’s more of a fear of commitment. I’ve spent all of my life up to this point going through school, and the unstated but understood goal of this is graduating and doing something ‘successful’ with your life. And while I have ideas of what I want to do, many of them are unconventional. It’s been easy to talk about them the last 2 or 3 years, but to actually pursue them is something else. Along with this comes the fear of abandoning the ‘professional’ track and pursuing what my heart and experience tells me is right for me, and for others.

But alas, in the end all this doesn’t matter much. I will board a plane tonight, arrive in America tomorrow (or in America, actually today), start school in a few weeks, graduate in a few months, and then do something with myself after that. All of these things will happen; as Grace and I are fond of remarking, time literally is always going... always moving forward. My life will move forward through these milestones whether I think I’m ready or not! But if there’s anything I’ve learned while I was here, it’s that things usually work out beautifully—sometimes differently than you expect, but often better than you expected as well. As I move forward, I continue to trust and believe that this will be the case. See you all soon!

PS. This may also be my last blog post for a while. The main purpose was to keep everyone up to date while I was away, and now I’m going home. If that is the case… thank you for reading! It’s meant a lot to me to see that people have taken the time to read my thoughts, my musings, my experiences. I’ve tried to express things openly and honestly, so it’s been very meaningful that my loved ones have engaged with me here as well.