Don't forget to breathe

Sorry I've been so crap about blogging lately. When I actually get a chance to sit down and write anything, I'm just too tired, too strung out and there are so many words in my head but I can't get them to organize themselves just so.

Getting ready to move back to the U.S. is exhausting. Every single day is a rollercoaster. Things that only mildly irritated us before are now infuriating and make us hiss, "I CANNOT wait to get out of here!" to each other and mentally count our remaining days in our heads.

At the same time, I'm now prone to misting over and getting all choked up over something as small as standing in my classroom, watching my kids work. Leaving our students is going to break our hearts. It's already starting to. The kids are tactfully pretending they don't notice my new habit of quickly wiping away tears at any given second during class, but I know I've been caught more than once.

It's no different when we're with our friends here, either. Just the other night, my friend Julia--who will still be here next year--started to tear up when we talked about the quickly-approaching end of the year and within seconds my own eyes were welling over. Yeah, there is a lot about the school itself that's frustrating us right now, but as far as our friends and our students go...I can't even bring myself to write about it.

Moving back is scary. I don't know how to describe it so that anyone can begin to understand why. In theory, it shouldn't be scary--we're moving back to our home country, to friends and to family. We're Americans, we're moving to America.

It's the same, but it's not. Reverse culture shock has a reputation for being a real bitch. People often don't expect it--it's moving home. But it's real. It's there. We experience mild bouts of it just visiting for a few weeks at Christmas. The girl who left home three years ago is not the same girl who's coming back. She is but she isn't, if that makes any sense.

"Prepare to feel like a total foreigner in your own country and prepare for no one else to really understand why," we've been told. "Your really good friends will be patient and will love you anyway."

OK, well, the last part I knew. I guess the rest, the culture shock and homesickness (yes--homesickness...this is home, too), we'll just have to ride out. I figure if I survived my first six months here, which were brutal, well enough to want to stick around a year longer than I had to, I'll be OK.

I know it in my heart, but that doesn't mean I don't lose sleep.

Six weeks. In six weeks we leave. We move to St. Louis mid-July. Travis is officially a grad student at Webster University. Jobs, cars and home will get figured out and I have to tell myself that worrying about these things doesn't help. Things will fall into place. I have to tell myself that.

Kelly tells me to "schedule time to breathe, too." I know. I am. I try. I'm sorry if this doesn't make a lot of sense, if it seems disjointed and rambling. I guess if it does, it's fitting. I just felt I owed some sort of explanation for the prolonged periods between new blogs. I'll write more, I promise.

Right now I'm just taking time to breathe. It's all I can do.