91. the most IMPORTANT post: Sometimes, I should really keep my trap shut

so for once, there's no ds on a wednesday, which meant i got to sleep in. yesterday, the spanish teacher was absent & at night, there was my conseil de classe, which all amounts to having only two hours of intégrals & primitives. not too shabby...

so as i've explained in a previous entry, not everyone has the same perspective on my year here & how much time i have left. it puts me in a difficult situation, where i feel torn. this is probably what a girl who has two guys fighting over her must feel.

the truth is, being away from home-home has in NO WAY made me feel like i don't want to go back nor that i dread home-home. on the contrary, it has only reinforced the connection that i feel with my own family. it's incredible how much i've realized about how i've grown up, my childhood, the kind of person that i've become & the kind of person that i want to be. being in a new family, i can't help but compare them to my old family & those are the moments that i realize what i agree with, what i disagree with & what i can simply tolerate, which is to say, (yes the brutal truth) that neither side is perfect. & that's when i tell myself that i should keep my trap shut.

but i know that i can't because what i truly want is to CLARIFY THINGS & to erase the fact that there are "sides". there are no sides, just differences. it hurts me to hear one family talk about the other as "them" as if they're the enemies, especially when the whole point of the AFS experience is to promote peace. having lived with a new family for six months, i now officially feel part of the family, which must sound like betrayal to my family-family & you must be thinking, "how can you possibly belong to two families?" honestly, i won't try to explain it to you because it's just something you have to live. it's a like a trying to explain a lost child, or a miscarriage; not to be morbid or anything but those are just things that are inexplicable but certainly liveable.

what i want to say most is that i feel like i'm a part of my french family the way that someone can feel like they belong to a group; a choir, a hockey team, a fight against breast cancer etc. i feel like i belong somewhere whereas back in december/january, i was straddling. HOWEVER, & this is the biggest however that there may exist, that doesn't in any way change the fact that my roots, my deep down insides are cemented in my family-family & that it's never going to change. i want to go home but nevertheless, i want to stay here too but not because life is in anyway "better" but because thinking about going back reminds me of all the changes i have to face all over again & all the readaptation i'll have to go through...AGAIN.

i'm really not trying to be selfish but adaptation is freaking hard on the soul, even for me considered that i'm pretty adaptable. i'm looking forward to weekend breakfasts with my family-family but i already forsee a difficult period. honestly, i'm kind of scared.

it's completely understandable but very few of my friends & family realize that i could actually be having a great time here. also, the fact that since i've left, not a lot has changed for them but that A LOT has changed for me has something to do with it too.
let's say life back home is a boat speeding straight forward with everyone who knows me on it. for a while, i decide to jump off the boat & onto another one who's speeding straight forward as well right alongside the first boat. well, i get the feeling that everyone just expects me jump back on the boat with a slight memory lapse of what happened while i was off & that's all, which is from being the case. i think that people forget that i was ON ANOTHER BOAT. i lived & i changed. when i jump back onto the first boat, life most likely WILL NOT continue where i had left off. it WILL be different. i'm not trying to scare you guys or anything, but i just want to make things very clear.

leaving is not the same as coming: when i left, i didn't know what awaited me but now when i go, i have an idea of what awaits me & that's the scary part of my perspective. life back home also WILL NOT continue where it left off. A LOT can change in one year.

conclusion: there's a difference between loving & feeling connected to a family & actually wanting to live with them, which sounds completely wrong but completely right for me. in the past half-year, i've never felt so much love, appreciation & envy for my own family due to the fact that i was not physically with them so please do not interpret not being overly eccstatic to go home as not wanting to be with family. i'm only dreading all the changes that come with it that i'll have to face.

i wonder if in another six months, i'll have wished that i had kept my trap shut on a sunny wednesday morning in march...if this post will have done more harm than good...

[bt]