midsummer

As I always seem to be when another post comes up - I am on a plane. Flying back home, and we’ve almost landed. We’re descending now. I’ve already had 5 weeks at home - mainly consumed by an internship that I had as part of my Extended Home Service working as an Assistant Director on a new play about press freedom in Singapore. It was fascinating stuff, but very tiring. I’ve managed to see almost all my friends at least once, but now there is a different feeling. Last summer, I was in flux, in between Japan & Canada. I’d already left home, yet now I was leaving home again: but not going back to somewhere familiar, now it was totally different, across the world. I was so looking forward to Pearson that I neglected my friendships, didn’t make enough effort. 

This summer it’s different - I’m trying more to see people, spend time with them, and for this I am grateful. It’s lovely to feel rooted back home too. Yet at the same time, I know this is temporary - I know I have 13 days left at home, before I leave again. I’m slightly sad, it’s not long left. But I’m determined to make the days count. Feel like I’ve done what I could have with this time. But, I also know I’ll be coming back home in a year, this time not having returning to Pearson to look forward to, to centre my attention on. I can feel myself slipping back into who I was last summer, and it feels like this year of change and development has meant almost nothing now that I’m back home. Or maybe it’s not showing itself so well. But, I am surprised by how I seem to be picking up where I left of with many things, almost rediscovering interests, things I did. It’s a bit scary too - all these things I’d forgotten about while in Canada, now remembered again. 

I’ll admit that while I cannot wait to see people again, not just see their faces, but really wrap them in my hands, sit with them, smile with them; I am terrified of returning. I don’t know how I’ll be like after this year is over, knowing I will never be at Pearson in the same role again. That student experience will end in a year’s time. But I’m also overjoyed to be spending a year of my life at Pearson. I used to be so fearful of wasting years, not taking the moment for what it was, yet at Pearson I don’t have to worry about it. I know I’ll be happy with my time; spending it there. And this comforts me too. 

Every time I think about going back to campus, I’m happy for a moment until I remember that there will be 70 people’s presences I am missing. I don’t know how I’ll go around the campus and the forest without the painful memory of these people and their shadows in the places we used to be together. I’ve been talking to a few of my second years, asking them the most useful question that I discovered this year - ‘what were you feeling like at this point?’. Our experiences are so similar- there is so much to learn and be comforted from in that fact. Everyone goes through the withdrawal, the sadness. But if my second years were OK, then so will I. 

I’m not sure how to feel about PC45. What a strange feeling; PC45 has never existed to me until this summer. Seeing it now, I’m confused, not used to it. I can’t imagine how all of them feel. I hope that it’s all good though, but I remember the pain of leaving last summer, the fear of stepping into the unknown too. Oh wow. What a journey. And I suppose there is a lot to be said for us, now that we will be taking this journey together. 

I have to remember that impressions are made to be broken: at least from what I’ve experienced. I must remember to keep my mind open to the potential to find beauty in everyone. 

Oh, how I miss Peddar Bay right now. 

Theo

PS: 

I leave for Rome on the 31st. I’ll be seeing Marta soon after that. Hopefully Morgane & Lara join. Oh I can hardly think of it without getting excited. I can’t wait. It will be so thrilling to be alone in a new country for a while! I hope I discover so much, and then will have so much to talk about. Well, not like that’s a problem normally. :-D