I invited myself along to dinner with N.'s classmates, and they were all the sort of cool, interesting people that I wish I had around me all the time. I need to meet more cool people in Universe City, so my normal life can be filled with evenings like this. One of them actually turned out to be a lawyer who several other lawyers had told me I should track down: he has worked in Liberia. And so, today, I met N. and J. for lunch, and N. and I watched J.'s photos and videos of Liberia.
"That's my whole childhood," I said, as a man on the screen called people to attention and started speaking, "sitting there listening to speeches."
The faces in the photos were familiar. No, I don't know them, most of them, but they look familiar, like someone I could have passed on the street growing up, or the last time I was in Monrovia.
"What about you?" J. asked. "Do you miss it? Do you want to go back to Africa?"
"I'm fine until I see something like that," I said, "and then I want to go back." Sometimes, some moments, the fact that I am not there, that half of my home is 6977 miles and more away from here burns into me. How can I live this way? How can I be happy without at least traveling back there? I feel trapped by my interesting job and my comfortable house. They keep me here, when there are so many places that I haven't yet been. There are so very many interesting places to live, so why am I here?
"Sometimes I miss it so much that I even catch myself missing Southern Sudan," I said, and grinned at N. "N. heard those stories right after I came back, so he knows what a huge step that is."
"Uh, yes. It definitely is." N. said. He probably remembers an evening that was almost completely full of me telling stories about the worst of my experience in Southern Sudan, those days when I wanted to go home every night and then every morning I would wake up to sunlight and think maybe I could survive another day, only to spend the next evening cursing myself for not having yet booked a flight out of there.
We sat there in a crummy little Chinese restaurant in Universe City, with Liberia on the screen, and my worlds collided violently. I wanted it all: these people, this job, this moment, this happiness, but also those people, that place, that moment, that feeling of possibility. I love what I have here, but I regret having given up that place.
I still miss the life I had there, and I still know that I can't go back to live there as long as I am going back there to live alone. I know that I need friends who stay instead of friends who leave after three months or six months or a year. I can list a million ifs, any of which would make it possible for me to go back to live in Africa, but I can't force any of them to happen.
And yet, I am happy here, happier than ever I was there. The very fact that I can turn to N. and refer to something that happened three years ago and he was here then, and he is here now... well, that is why I moved to Gone West in the first place, and I am so very thankful to be exactly where I need to be, even if part of me is thousands of miles away.
"That's my whole childhood," I said, as a man on the screen called people to attention and started speaking, "sitting there listening to speeches."
The faces in the photos were familiar. No, I don't know them, most of them, but they look familiar, like someone I could have passed on the street growing up, or the last time I was in Monrovia.
"What about you?" J. asked. "Do you miss it? Do you want to go back to Africa?"
"I'm fine until I see something like that," I said, "and then I want to go back." Sometimes, some moments, the fact that I am not there, that half of my home is 6977 miles and more away from here burns into me. How can I live this way? How can I be happy without at least traveling back there? I feel trapped by my interesting job and my comfortable house. They keep me here, when there are so many places that I haven't yet been. There are so very many interesting places to live, so why am I here?
"Sometimes I miss it so much that I even catch myself missing Southern Sudan," I said, and grinned at N. "N. heard those stories right after I came back, so he knows what a huge step that is."
"Uh, yes. It definitely is." N. said. He probably remembers an evening that was almost completely full of me telling stories about the worst of my experience in Southern Sudan, those days when I wanted to go home every night and then every morning I would wake up to sunlight and think maybe I could survive another day, only to spend the next evening cursing myself for not having yet booked a flight out of there.
We sat there in a crummy little Chinese restaurant in Universe City, with Liberia on the screen, and my worlds collided violently. I wanted it all: these people, this job, this moment, this happiness, but also those people, that place, that moment, that feeling of possibility. I love what I have here, but I regret having given up that place.
I still miss the life I had there, and I still know that I can't go back to live there as long as I am going back there to live alone. I know that I need friends who stay instead of friends who leave after three months or six months or a year. I can list a million ifs, any of which would make it possible for me to go back to live in Africa, but I can't force any of them to happen.
And yet, I am happy here, happier than ever I was there. The very fact that I can turn to N. and refer to something that happened three years ago and he was here then, and he is here now... well, that is why I moved to Gone West in the first place, and I am so very thankful to be exactly where I need to be, even if part of me is thousands of miles away.
1 comment:
Yes, yes, and yes.
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