Experience in Leaving Before You are Gone
I hate this state of Limbo. I’m not quite here, but I’m certainly not there.
My flight back to the States departs in 22 days. That’s 22 days of taking in everything as deeply as I can before I move and return home from abroad. Already I’m dissolving here: I make decisions in the grocery store for what can be used before I leave; I have a countdown in my calendar for how few days and hours I have left. I make sure to give away what I won’t take back. In these little ways I have to force myself to be removed from the south of France.
It all gives me this sick feeling in my stomach.
Ending a Phase of Life
It’s a small death, a closing of a well loved chapter. I’m going to stop existing here.
It’s a grief, though not coupled with the same type of grief I carried when I first moved here. This type of grief involves packing myself up in ways that don’t fit in suitcases. If I am to treat the people I have met with love then I must leave only warm memories behind. And maybe a few shirts.
This mourning involves the distinct pain of knowing I’m alive but that I can’t be live here anymore. And just to get it off my chest: I’m miffed that I’m leaving right as the weather finally gets warm.
I can’t make plans for an immediate future because I’m compelled to leave. Any weekend trips are limited to a few hours tops, and I’m adverse to meet new people because I don’t want anyone else that I have to say goodbye to. Mostly I’m just tying up loose ends and walking in circles around the town park. I want to be fully present but I have to think ahead to what I’ll do when I get back (current status: only God knows.)
Truth is, I don’t know how to be fully in my life in France when me and everyone I know already consider me vanishing.
This is good, isn’t it? The fact that leaving France fills me with dread is a good sign. It means I’ve had a good time here. It means I’ve loved here. I’ve also been sick to near death here, and leaving everything behind to move to a new country has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But that’s what has been the blessing of it. I’ve endured the pain and the joy and found them both to make me more of myself. And I don’t want it to be over.
C’est La Vie
C’est la vie is the French expression for periods like this. It can be used for anything, but for moments of great transition it is said slowly and with weight. Though sad, it is not unfortunate. It simply is.
I recall Frank O’Hara’s “Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul” specifically the lines
the only thing to do is simply continue
Poetry Foundation
is that simple
yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do
can you do it
yes, you can because it is the only thing to do
It’s a poem with a wonderful longing for France and the compulsion to simply continue.
And that is what I am full of in these fleeting days. If you are in a similar nearly-leaving and halfway-left stage of moving anywhere – but especially from overseas – that is the only advice I can offer us both. To remember you aren’t gone yet and to move forward.
Continue.
Doesn’t matter if you don’t know where you are going: you must go there.
I know I’ll be back someday, I just don’t know when. I’m praying it’s sooner rather than later.
God’s will be done.