So a while back some of my favourite vloggers did a series of videos as to why they were scared in response to a genuine fear posted about one of them by one of them. (Did you follow that?). This will be something like that, only written and on something that is related to me.
I hate change. In any form. Which is why I was so entirely baffled as to how I was coping so well with this year. Then it hit it me. I was prepared for this . They tell you what to expect and its mad out here, amazing but mad. Being so entirely foreign there is no change only new. Therein lying the reason it wasn't a change it was just NEW. There is a subtle difference but I can't explain it. I hate changes, but I adapt merely because there is no choice and I learned long ago that kicking out and lashing out at something that has already happened is pointless, though like most I am still given to the occasional tantrum.
What scares me is the change that awaits me in September, returning to a place and a dynamic that was once so familiar that I could easily forget the more terrifying aspects of what lay ahead, but was simultaneously reminded of what even a year ago I knew was going to be the worst part of this experience: coming back.
The places won't have changed that much. But it's not the physical things that make a place amazing; it's the faces. And many of those will be missing . It's not just the missing that cause a difference. A year is both simultaneously not long enough and far too long. From having spent even my trifling 21 years on this planet I can tell you people change more in a year than you ever stop to think about. Stop think about it for a moment, the people you've met in the last year, the things you've done the relationships forged, the broken links and the steady continuation of those things you take for granted. Now factor in that each and everyone of these incidences has an effect on you, some profound, some seemingly inconsequential; each adding to or changing some facet of your personality, a dynamic in your relationships.
Now think about someone who has been gone from a situation for a not insubstantial period of time, coming back into something that to you is still normal, to faces you consider close friends that they've never met, to places that haven't changed superficially but under the surface couldn't be more different.
That's what I face. I've come to realise that all those things I miss most aren't even there to go back to. My closest friends will be gone, and there will be strangers who have moved into take their place, and those who remain have moved on out of necessity and those who return with you have the same problem you do, and just like the others you've changed too. And that's why I'm scared. A place I once considered home is now alien, I have once again to carve myself a niche,sounds easy, but weirdly it's harder in a place you think you know, trust me I did it once already. And maybe it seems worse than it actually is but having spoken to 4th yr returnees I don't feel like it is, as one of them said they prepare you for everything going out but neglect to mention the coming back which is bizarrely even more confusing.
And that, dear reader friend, is the worst part of the YA for me.
I'm scared because I miss something that no longer exists, and its a painful reality, a mini grieving if you will, and that I believe is the nub of the so called reverse culture shock.
So I'm going to go and make ridiculous numbers of cheese and Marmite toasties, drink tea because no sane person drinks coffee at this time and sleeps and hug my teddy because that's the best a girl can get alone in a weird country that isn't her own weird country.
Beth xxx
p.s. I moved, it's awesome and I'll tell you all about when I'm less introspective.
