The Interim

I have come to realize that this year is something like putting my life on pause for a while. Yes, it is an incredible experience, and I’m amazingly glad to be here. I love the city. I love learning about the culture. I am perpetually interested in everything. But still, when you’ve grown accustomed to marking your life by the school year, having it suddenly cut off, while exhilarating, is also a little disorienting.

We’re well and truly settled in now. Shona and Tristan have finally started school properly, after the chaos of placement tests and open spots at school and schedule shuffling and fighting with the weird hours and class times. They’re making friends. They’ve both had people over for sleepovers already. Dad is working, as he always has; mom has settled into her domestic life, here as at home, and is looking for dance classes to take. This is normal life for them. Me, I’m not quite sure what to do with myself.

I had a meeting a few days ago with a volunteer organization called Secours Populaire. I left a file with them for their volunteer tutoring program – hopefully soon I’ll get matched with a high school student I can help with their English. For now, though, they didn’t have any files for me. The year has only just started and there aren’t many students looking for help yet. I’m considering putting up fliers or something – maybe even at the universities. I could even try charging them for it. But I just don’t know. It’s all very foreign to me. I’m not used to having to actively create opportunities to meet people.

You don’t realize how much of your social life is built around your school schedule until it’s suddenly gone.

I’ve tried looking into a club, as well – I subscribed to their newsletter, and I sent them an email. I haven’t heard back yet, though. I’m worried. Their website was last updated for the 2007-2008 school year, and even though various universities still have them listed on their clubs pages, I’m concerned that they might not be running anymore. But all I can do is wait and hope – there’s no way to force an answer on the matter, unless I want to try fumbling my way through a French phone conversation. Frankly, I’d rather wait – though if I don’t get an answer from them soon I might have to look at some other clubs. An art club, maybe. If I like what they’re doing.

But none of this helps me shake the feeling that my life is on hold. I’ll join a club – for nine months. Then I’ll never be involved with it again. I’ll make a few friends – who I’ll see every now and then, for this year. Then I’ll be gone and, while they may remain my friends on Facebook, chances are we’re not going to talk too much, and we’ll probably never see each other again, barring some strange accident of fate. I’ll entertain myself with this free time for a year – then I’ll be back home and back at school, getting involved in the curriculum and the student life again, seeing my friends in classes, meeting up with my girl every weekend instead of just over the internet. And as much as I don’t regret coming here for the year, I still find myself longing for that future life. Planning for it.

I want desperately to go through my entire wardrobe, one last time, and get rid of everything I don’t care about – most of it, half of it, any of it that doesn’t matter anymore. I want to sort through every drawer and cupboard and cabinet and shelf in my room and discard everything not of importance. I want to sort through the hundreds of books in my room, decide which ones I want to keep, which ones I want to save, and which ones I no longer care about. I want to put things into bags and give them away, or give them to my siblings, or give them to my mother to sort onto the household shelves. I want to take down all my old posters and hand them out to people who would want them. I want to discard all the little pieces of junk I still have lying around. I want to clean everything out, remove it, and move on. Then I want to take all of the things I’ve decided to keep, pack them into boxes, and move out. I want to leave my furniture in my room only as a testament to my existence, and one day, I want to move all of it out, too, and move it into my new home, my own home.

I want my own home. I want my own life.

I want to start collecting recipe books. I want to learn how to operate all the household appliances. I want to get my own toaster. I want to make a list of all the movies I someday want for my own, and I want to build up my own collection. I want to collect all of the things around the house that I know to be mine, and take them with me. I want to be able to set my own schedule, my own rules, my own rhythms.

I’m turning eighteen in eleven days. In less than two weeks, I will be a legal adult, and I want something to show for it.

It’s raining here today. Really raining – not storming at night or raining briefly and lightly for a while in the afternoon – for the first time. Maybe I’ll go out for a walk. Maybe the rain is a new beginning. Maybe the rain will help me recapture the essence of myself from the future sky it’s flown off to, to wind it back down into myself, where it can bide its time for another nine months, until I can take my life off pause and give birth to this child of expectation I’ve been holding within myself for so long.

The Nature of Loneliness

There are some things about this country that still strike me every time I step outside the door. The people are closer here – not emotionally, but literally, physically closer. It’s not uncommon to see two young men on the same motorcycle; girls walk down the streets with their arms linked; people are comfortable sitting three or four to a bench, their shoulders and hips in contact. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who are friends and who are couples. Sometimes it’s not. Kissing in public isn’t nearly so frowned upon here.

Maybe I wouldn’t be noticing this so much if I wasn’t missing the physical contact I’m still so used to in my daily life. It’s been two months – one month in the apartment already – and I haven’t yet made any friends. I want to join a club, find some people to meet who share my interests, but I don’t know how to look for access to university clubs and dad hasn’t been able to help me yet – regardless, I’m not sure they’ve even started up yet. I miss my friends. I miss my girl. I miss having people around who I can touch who aren’t members of my family.

I have met some people, sort of. I spent a while listening to an old homeless man who I’ve always seen alone. It was hard to understand him through his thick accent and rapid speech, but I thought it was more important to listen than to understand every word he said. He was sweet, and very hopeful for the future, both mine and his – but he’s not the kind of person I want to spend a Saturday afternoon hanging out with. Same goes for the university-aged people I’ve bumped into a few times who were shocked and astonished to learn that I was completely drug-free and didn’t sleep around. I’d never been offered marijuana before, and I’d really rather keep it out of my face in the future.

It’s easier for my siblings – they go outside, play at the park, find other kids their age. The kids my age are all starting their first year of preparatory school, and are working hard to do well; even if they weren’t, the type of people I generally like hanging out with aren’t the types to go outside to make their friends. Hopefully I’ll be able to find something to do, some people I actually want to hang out with. I’ll look for a club. There’s also a goth and electronica night in a couple of weeks… I’m still debating on whether or not to go, because it starts really late, but it might be a good idea, at least to try out. I don’t know. We’ll see.

I seem to be saying that a lot lately. Please come visit me.