Breakfast Chats and Bike Paths

Monday, 7-25-16

   i had breakfast with a friend yesterday. We caught up with each other as we ate and then went for a walk. All the time, we discovered more about each other’s newer selves, which hadn’t existed the last time we talked.

   We talked about confidence in ourselves – or a lack thereof. We talked of school and relationships and finding ourselves. i talked about Europe and my adventures and how it changed me. And no one back home really has a connection to that Me – or version of Me. We talked about our new selves as just being upgrades of the old Us. The Me 2.0.

   But i don’t feel confidence in this new Me. i sometimes feel like the Me 2.0 is rejected by my old friends. They are happy with the version of Me they already have.

   He told me that i am – i should know – beautiful. i was ashamed to think i was surprised by that.        Not just because my friend, who i wouldn’t expect to say that . . .

   He said, “Everyone can know you can do it, but until you know it . . .” and he gestured at his head.

And it’s funny how it takes someone else telling you something about yourself to realize it. He told me, “It sounds like you are on the verge – and are ready for – an adventure and to take on the world.”

 That’s quite the plan, i thought.

  i am.

July Reflection

Neymar and Messi Twinning

7-18-16

     I pulled my Neymar Jr. shirt out of the wash and hung it up to dry. I thought about hanging it on Cristina’s laundry lines in Barcelona. Then I figured out that that that was probably a false memory because I only had the shirt at the end of my semester.

It’s fading already.

     Jess came over for my dinner party this weekend, and we both wore our jerseys together. Seeing the Neymar jersey on the hanger in my own laundry room made me think about what Jess and I shared while we were away. We may not have been the closest of friends while we were away, but we are staying pretty close this summer (knock on wood!). I’m very excited about that. We shared something that none of my friends back home shared with me. We will always be tied together like that. None of them – my home friends – can understand. Some of them even seemed to turn their noses up at who I was abroad when they heard the stories.

     But Jess only knew the Abroad Me. Despite living only an hour from each other at home, we met in the same place approximately 3,700 miles away. With that distance from home, we were able to be a different versions of ourselves – maybe in good ways, maybe in bad. Possibly, Jess saw me at my most reckless, and possibly, I saw her at her most vulnerable. Our friendship now, I think, is stronger because of it: because of the different places we explored together, because of being homesick together, because of being lost together.

     I didn’t find myself in Europe. I was looking too hard. But I don’t think I lost myself there either. I think what I did in Europe helped me find out some – and only some because I have more discovering to do – of the things I can be. 

i am . . . forgetting and discovering.