I feel a little bit frantic about activities lately, like I have to do every one that pops up, because I'm never sure, what with the having of about four friends, total, when the next opportunity will offer itself. I'm actually a tiny smidge glad, though, that my friend who is downtown at a big event didn't call me back after I returned her call. I know that I should want to go; her new boyfriend is bringing his friends and meeting boys is, after all, the Point of Life. But I'm tired. Amazing how exhausting it is to be left taskless, and, too, I stayed out too late last night living the life of a girl in the city: sharing four appetizers for dinner with a friend and then meandering back toward the train, stopping at a pub and a "nice" sports bar on the way just because the sun wasn't gone yet and the air was so perfect for sitting at an outside table.
It's brilliant to be sitting outside in the summer in Gone West. This is why I moved here, this chance to have friends and to know, as you sit outside with them, that they will not be leaving, and neither will you. Not unless something goes terribly wrong. I miss sitting outside at night in Africa: in Kibuye, in Monrovia, even in Tiny Little Town in Southern Sudan. I don't miss knowing that the people I sat with would be a part of my life only for a short time, maybe even a only a day or two. I don't like what that did to me.
Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and I almost wish to be in Michigan, just long enough to sit on my parents' back deck and eat a spicy black bean burger with cheese and maybe hold the baby nephew I've never seen. Instead I'm going out to the K. house, where I've been taken in as child number 3, where everything feels familiar and US-Dutch.
I am split into a million different places. Sometimes I'm afraid that I'll wake up and it will be ten years from now and I'll be living in the suburbs with 2.1 children and a husband who doesn't ever want to leave this country. And sometimes I'm afraid that I won't even last here until next spring.
It's brilliant to be sitting outside in the summer in Gone West. This is why I moved here, this chance to have friends and to know, as you sit outside with them, that they will not be leaving, and neither will you. Not unless something goes terribly wrong. I miss sitting outside at night in Africa: in Kibuye, in Monrovia, even in Tiny Little Town in Southern Sudan. I don't miss knowing that the people I sat with would be a part of my life only for a short time, maybe even a only a day or two. I don't like what that did to me.
Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and I almost wish to be in Michigan, just long enough to sit on my parents' back deck and eat a spicy black bean burger with cheese and maybe hold the baby nephew I've never seen. Instead I'm going out to the K. house, where I've been taken in as child number 3, where everything feels familiar and US-Dutch.
I am split into a million different places. Sometimes I'm afraid that I'll wake up and it will be ten years from now and I'll be living in the suburbs with 2.1 children and a husband who doesn't ever want to leave this country. And sometimes I'm afraid that I won't even last here until next spring.
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