Last week Jonny and I went home to Minnesota for 10 days, to visit, attend the Wedding of Champions, hang out in Duluth and go to the cabin. It was so great to be around my family and to be home – but it wasn’t long enough. I felt like I needed so much more time with my family, with my cabin and to reconnect with friends.
Living abroad is strange sometimes because it makes me feel so disconnected with my once so-close friends at home. I see them now and still totally love them and have fun with them, but there is also a level of strangeness there, a level of “well we definitely aren’t living in the same place anymore” and that’s ok because we still love each other – but maybe next time can we try to not make it so weird? Maybe it is me, maybe I am the one who makes it strange, because I come home and I feel like everyone’s lives at home have really gone on without me and who at home misses me and really notices that I am gone? It’s hard because I love my friends at home so much that part of me wants to move back just so that I can reconnect with them all and be really close with them, but then part of me knows that this is life and that we grow up and move away and do our best with staying in touch with the people that we can, while missing them along the way….
The thing about going home for a short period of time is just that – it’s too short. For the first summer ever I will only have spent 2 days at my cabin, where generally I spend weekend after weekend at it throughout the entire summer. When we were there it was cold and rainy and crappy weather – but I didn’t care – I loved it anyway. And I soaked in those two days so hard and when it was time to leave and I knew that I wouldn’t be coming back again this summer – I cried – and not just a little, but a lot. It’s hard being an adult sometimes and having to deal with the decision that you made of moving away from home and not being able to swim in your lake whenever you want to, or get hugged up by your Momma and Papa whenever you need it. So yup, I cried because the little girl in me didn’t want to deal with leaving, and didn’t want to face my big girl life of living in Mexico that includes a lot of being stressed out with work and away from most things familiar. But this is my life for the next year or so (and I’m not complaining too hard, because it’s a pretty good life at that) and I need to be ok with trading the experiences that I am getting from it now for what will someday hopefully be endless summers at Sweet Lake. But that doesn’t mean that my heart isn’t allowed to ache for it a little in this moment….
Me and some of my cousins on the lake
So freakin' happy to be out on that lake
Playing in the waterfalls
Jonnycito playing the guitar at the cabin - I love all of the green! It definitely is not that green here in Mexico
Lookin' silly in hats at Los Campones del Amor - aka the Wedding of Champions.
Miss you all back home….and for anyone who wants to send me letters – I’m not opposed to receiving them, or writing you back - because in case you didn't know - having pen pals and receiving real mail in the mail box is hecka fun. Lemme know and I'll send you my addresscito.
