How To Be Completely Yourself, And Other Less Impossible Tasks

The oddest thing happened to me the other day. I was walking out of school after only one class, and this brought to me a euphoria that caused me to do that thing people do in feel-good musicals when they just sort of smile and look around at the beauty surrounding them. I was wearing a skirt, and could feel the cold more acutely, and commented about it in my head. My head answered by reminding me to enjoy it while it lasts, because next week it’ll probably feel like June, hot and humid and sunny.

That was the first time I felt something close to homesickness.

I hate the weather in Austin. Many a rousing speech and passionate debate has been made by me, stating that I am completely against its unpredictability and all-around hellish extremes. There is nothing in the rule book that says that it cannot start a day at 10:00, sunny and 70 degrees, and end the day stormy and 35 degrees. I know this, because it’s not an uncommon occurrence. In my lifetime, in the same 50-mile radius, we have experienced thunderstorms, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, and drought (not a lot snow though; that’d be crazy). I have dreamt for years to move to a place with four seasons that exist in sequential order, and for a cold that does not flee after two days. I have made it, or at least for a little while. And for one passing moment, I missed my Austin weather.

It did not last. I feel like I should end this story with that. But it got me thinking about how easy it is to lose one’s own life story in the face of something new.

It has been less than two weeks since I have arrived in France, and I’m already planning on when I’m going to return. There has not been one day when I have not learned something new about this place and its people, and when I have not gone to bed thankful for this opportunity in the first place. But it is quite the odd and uncomfortable task to absorb everything you are learning and want to adapt, without losing yourself completely in the new. I am incredibly guilty of this, as I felt that I could take everything new on without a hitch, and come to realize a few days later how much I missed simple pieces of who I am. 

The weather is not a very interesting topic, but it has become a part of me that I didn’t realize I had. How do you find a balance between wanting to change yourself completely for the better, and realizing that in doing so you simply got rid of the good and bad pieces of you, only for them to be replaced? I read somewhere once that if you spent your whole life trying to perfect yourself and get rid of your messiness, you’ll only miss out on the beautiful experience of being a human. 

Maybe your whole life is meant to be lived on a wire. I’m not the one to ask.

I have noticed that I’ve started to change, however. For instance, I like mushrooms now. I used to hate the things, tasteless little pieces of rubber that people put in innocent, unsuspecting soups. Now, I buy them specifically to put in dishes. I feel more prepared for a day that I have to schedule around the bus. I’m forced to listen more attentively to people speaking to me in a language I’m still learning. There are little things that were not how I was before, and yet seem completely natural. I’m sure I will change more before I leave, and that more faults will replace the ones I threw away. The weather here is more stable, but the seasons change all the same. A time will come when I can look back on this and think, “oh, I was so young”.

But that’s for a much later date. 

In the meantime, I suppose I’ll have to buy more sweaters.