In every story there is a beginning, there is a middle and there is an end. The beginning of the story lays the facts out on the table: who is in the story, where they live, what the problem is and it starts some of the adventures. The middle is where you decide whether you love the story or you hate it; the characters go through heaven, hell and back again. The end is where everything wraps up and everyone goes home happy.
My story had a beginning; one of the best beginnings in history. It has a middle; I've decided I'm in love. It will have an ending, and the beginning of the end for me was yesterday - my 6th month anniversy and the day that I stopped counting the days here, and started counting the days until I return to my homeland. I will not be going home happy.
It makes me sad to think that over half my exchange has already finished, that the time has slipped through my fingers and now the clock is ticking faster and faster as each day goes by. Soon it will be summer - the summer tour with Rotary, my mom and sisters coming to visit, Songkran, meditating at the temple. Soon after that it will be the rainy season - more family visits, more meditating at the temple and soon... it will be the end of July and I will be packing my bags to come home. It has all gone by too fast.
Time is a complicated and fickle friend. Or rather, in turn, WE are the complicated and fickle ones. We count down for exciting moments - willing the time to fly by.. and yet it never does. Then, when we realise how much time we have wasted on trying to speed time up, we realise it is going too fast and we beg for it to slow down. It never does; it races past, pushing the hardest at the end, flying through the finish line and onwards with full speed ahead.
I'm excited to come home to see my friends. I love them more than anything. I'm excited to be home, in my comfy bed with my pets and to be with my family; I'm excited to drive, to go back to work, to learn something new and exciting at school... to dance and go to band practice again.
But I'll be leaving behind so much more - my family, my friends, my language, my country. I will be leaving behind food I love, people I can't imagine not seeing, a culture I have fallen head over heels in love with and a language I am terrified of forgetting. It's almost what I left at the beginning of my story, but this time I don't have a countdown for when I will come back. There is no ending to my return to Canada. Just a beginning. And the beginning of my end in Thailand started yesterday.
"I love you as midnight loves the moon"
15 years ago
1 comment:
This post reminds me of Click. I know exactly how you feel, Emma. I find myself wishing time would go by so much faster to the part where the hard part is over, but then you realise the hard part is what you liked the best. It's not the same after...you wish you had back those other days, you wish it wasn't over yet. But, alas you can't have it back and it's devistating. Make the last 6 months count. Don't count the days until you go back to Canada, count the days you still have in Thailand.
Enjoy yourself,
Matt
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