untitled melancholic post

Hello!

So, the title of this post is not super specific, but I really didn't know what to title it. I've just been reflecting a lot in the past two weeks about how close I am to the end of my time in France. It seems pretty insane how quickly this post-grad year passed. The same refrain everyone always says no matter what period of their life they are in. Time always passes faster every year you get older and this year was no real exception. It just has been hitting me lately because I just finished up my third of four vacations, which means that I am over halfway done. Now I have a little less than two months left and I am already feeling the double-edged sword of finishing a period of your life, an infuriating mix of melancholy of all I'm leaving behind and anxiety about all that there is to come.

Traveling with people, living abroad with other foreigners, and going through the same struggles with the same group of people brings you close to them a lot quicker than normal life brings you to those around you. I've already made so many friendships that I am going to be sad to leave behind and so many good memories in Toulon, with my teachers, and with my friends at church that it will be hard to go back to a place that I've known all my life. Moreover, the bad part about being American is that you live so far from all these other places. Our country is so big it's not very easy to leave it. I'll miss that about Europe and it will be infinitely harder to keep contact with all my European friends because of the time change and distance. The more I am in France, the more I want to be. I know when I return to California, I will feel the same about the U.S. You tend to feel torn between two places so far away from each other.

That's all I have to say right now on that subject. Good news, I am positive that this part of my life was where I was meant to be. I do not regret coming to France again. It has opened my eyes wider than they were before and for that I am grateful.