Kristin has this great way of describing what it’s like when you first move somewhere new.
She says that, for the first few days, everything seems bizarre and dreamlike, because the place and the people you left still seem more real than the place and people you’re surrounded by now. And then things start to shift: gradually the world around you becomes real and the elsewhere becomes a memory. Your mind slides from one reality to another, passes through some kind of barrier. I imagine the process looks like that science experiment when you pour liquids of different densities into a jar and watch the top layer sink slowly through everything else until it rests at the bottom.
I only notice the barrier when I try to reach through it again, like when I’m writing a letter to a friend or calling my family. That’s when I realize that my life now is hard for them to imagine. I have to straddle the barrier between the place I was and the place I am in order to draw comparisons. ‘Yes, April might sound snowy and cold, but the sun is so strong and warm that I can still take my coat off on windless days and feel that spring is happening.’ ‘No, it never really gets dark anymore, but it doesn’t feel unnatural—just like there is so much time in the day to be doing something.’
I’ve been thinking about this real-unreal situation a lot lately. Our first new volunteer will arrive next week and step into her own unreality. And lots of people around town have been asking us if we’re staying, if we’re leaving, what that next step will be. I keep saying that I haven’t made up my mind, and I still have three months living here, and I’ll go home no matter what to see my family. I miss them.
But I don’t want to think too much about that future unreality. I want to live today, even if all I do is write a few inspirational spots, send some emails, and run up and down the stairs during the Four O’Clock Needle Drop to find song requests. It’s so real to me, and, finally, almost comfortable. Maybe I keep trying to share my life in fragments of comparisons and funny stories with people who are far away so that, when they see me next, they won’t be surprised that parts of me are still living somewhere else.
