I am sitting on my bed gulping down my morning oatmeal and watching the hundred flies that have made an entire galaxy out of my bedroom ceiling with the solitary hanging lightbulb as their Sun and god. I like to pretend they are a bee’s hive so it doesn’t feel so disgusting.
I put on my favorite radio podcast to listen to a story about memories. It seems so obvious that it is silly to even say it, but the thought keeps going through my head. Things in the United States didn’t stop when I left. They will keep going. People will change. Their lives will change. And when I come back, it isn’t going to be anything like I left it.
It would seem that this would be blindingly obvious and not a big deal but somehow, it strikes a chord in my chest that doesn’t have such a beautiful sound, but carries an alluring, inquisitive resonance. The kids love to come in here and look at my pictures. So I am forced about once a day to see the montage of people I love and explain in one sentence who they are, and where we are in that photo. These kids are far more entertained by the fact that peoples’ eyes turn red in pictures than the fact that that is a photo of the last hug I had with my best friend before I moved here.
Because I have no way to get in touch with the people I love, I cling to these memories of who they were and who we were together. Why? Because when a skinny little white girl is thrown into a third world South American community her life is going to be pretty isolated. So, I think about times when I didn’t feel so alone or alien. And, I know that these memories are only that, memories, and all I can do is look forward to what the future has to perform for me. I can only hope that when I do return to my homeland that the few restaurants I loved still make my favorite dishes, that there are still some single folks out there, and a couple people at least pretend to be interested in what I spent the last two years of my life devoted to.
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