wear sunscreen

This post is weeks in the writing, months in the making, so please bear with me as I reminisce over what just happened and all the emotions that overtook me along the way. I've always said that this blog is written more for me to remember, and to aid in my own personal growth, than it is to entertain readers, so just keep that in mind while I unpack this for a bit.

Taken when I probably should have been sleeping in preparation for my 2 am wake up call and the 27 hours that followed.

I'll start with a little excerpt of my notes, scribbled out every time I feel a little to deeply or just don't know how to feel at all. January 18th, aboard the bus to Tirana, 18 hours to boarding: The closer I get, the more terrified I am to go, but I think I’m even more terrified to come back. I’m not sure what it is... fear that I’ll realize how foreign home feels, perhaps that I’ll be the foreign one. Fear that I’ll be dropped right in the middle of a place, a family, a time that has gone on without me, like my own existence was on pause, and suddenly my life is that maddening movie where the mouths are moving but the sound comes 0.5 seconds later. Fear that I’ll see my world through Albanian eyes, what will it look like? Will I still love my home? What if I fall head over heels for it? Because then there’s this fear that I will board a plane in two weeks, bound for small town Albania, full of some kind of crippling emotion, resentment, perhaps? Sadness? The feeling of not being ready? And when I get to small town Albania, what if it the suddenness of it all hits me hard, and I fall head over heels for this place? What if I realize that home isn’t where I thought it was at all, and my heart is torn between the people I love and the place that calls me? Or what if, all of the sudden, home doesn’t feel like anywhere? Am I ready for that? Am I ready for any of this? Am I ready to say goodbye to my family again, to press pause again for yet another year and change?

I wasn’t ready. I had been preparing for this trip for 7 months. It is an absolute miracle that I was able to keep that secret from the 5 people on this earth that know everything there is to know about me and then some. There were many a moments where I almost cracked. My mother was incessantly insisting that I come home, so I finally blurted (in a panic, needing it to stop, knowing I would crack if she asked again) that I was going to Germany with my friends. Then she said she would mail me a giant blanket sweater, and I said, "No, it's fine. I'll just grab it when I...", then panicked and hung up the phone, texting her saying I lost WiFi. My brother just flat out asked me if I was coming home, and I said, "So, this earthquake is really making it hard to make plans right now.... why?", which isn't really an answer, but he never texted me back, so I got lucky on that one. One time, mom mentioned coming to Albania for Christmas, and Niku actually said, "Well that would be funny if you showed up to an empty house", to which I stamped on his foot, and he replied, "Relax, they don't speak Shqip". So the plan, for months, had been that my whole family would be together on a limo ride to go look at Christmas lights, and I would be there at the house when they got back.

On my last day at home as I was packing my bag to go back to Albania, my mom asked, "Didn't you bring any clothes?", to which I replied, "I didn't have any room with all the gifts you guys got from everyone in town except me".

A week before I embarked on this journey, my family looked at their schedules and realized that the South Central game was that night, and being just, you know, a little tied to the school district and the high schools in just, you know, a couple ways, they decided that they should probably attend said game. So alas, they cancelled the plans that were so carefully worked out, and my eyes did a full 360 here in Corovoda. Looking back, it was the first marker of how different things can be in a year. Regardless, surprising everyone one by one was the only way, and whether we had to pull my sick mother out of bed or kick her out, we were going to make it work. So we showed up, sang some carols, surprised some people, cried a lot, and my exhausted self crashed into bed. Thus the journey began.

The overwhelming response to raki, *sniff*, "Is this safe to drink?"

It occurred to me that I’m just not a part of their lives anymore. It only happened for a second, but that feeling printed itself on my heart and made it ache in a way it never has. I remember the months I spent sitting next to my grandmother, holding her hand as life slowly slipped by. I remember feeling like I missed out on so many moments while I was too focused on myself. It's hard to give yourself grace for living your life when all of the sudden the importance of time is thrust in your face. It's hard to give yourself grace for the things that if you only knew then what you know now, you would have... It's also hard to make the conscious decision to ignore what you know for the sake of furthering your own ambitions, desires, urges. The thing is that I do know. I am always so very painfully, consciously aware of precious time, so walking away yet again feels like some sort of betrayal of my duty as a member of my family.

About two years ago, I had a sort of come to Jesus in my life where I realized that I was just so angry with the world, with the cards that had been dealt, and with my own inability to change the past. I am stubborn, and I am unforgiving. Grace is something I have to work for every single day. But two years ago, at this moment in my life of incredible low, I realized that it was my choice every day as to whether I am happy and on fire for what I am doing, or dwell in the dark places. It occurred to me that the time I was so frustrated at having wasted all those weekends that I didn't come home and visit my grandmother during college, nights that I didn't call, texts that I didn't write, all of that time was being lost twice over every time I gave the regret space in my mind. So, I took up a new mantra, choose joy. That mantra has pulled me in many different directions, and ultimately led me here, small town Albania. That mantra also led me back just a few days ago, because regardless of how painful it is to feel apart from my family, to turn my head, pull out my passport, and round that corner, I know that I spending a life in fear of future loss is not a life.

The second hardest see ya later. (Don't worry, the first was also them, just a year ago.)

My final request was a sunrise walk. I remember walking past a car and thinking about my next visit home, a visit I planned to make accompanied by Niku. It suddenly hit me that if I brought him along, I wouldn’t be able to sit on my parents bed at night, playing Skip-Bo as long as my drooping eyes would allow. I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning and commandeer my father's spot to drink my morning coffee and watch The Office with my parents. I wouldn’t be able to pretend that I’m still a kid, still a part of that life, still living in a world where nothing has changed. I made the decision that I wasn’t ready for that. I would just have to make up an excuse to come alone because I wanted to pretend a little longer. I wanted one more chance to be that person. Then it occurred to me that keeping my family from others was incredibly selfish, but also that, being a kid isn’t my place anymore, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a place in my home. It just means that my place may look different and will continue to change. Eventually my siblings with go off and create families and lives of their own, and I can’t wait around for them to do so to finally be ready to admit that I can’t cling to the big sister title forever. They are changing even if I don’t want them to, and I’m honestly lucky that moments where life is so together, so reminiscent of my 18 years as a full-time Exline-house resident, are still even possible.

Just some Kansas beauty.

So on that sunrise walk, I would argue that I went through all the stages of grief. The day before, I was frustrated simply because it seemed that my family was pulled in a million directions. Getting everyone together on my final full day home seemed an impossible feat, and I was all kinds of hurt and angry about it. To be fair, I have probably been in the denial stage for about seven years now, but that denial hit me full on in the face that day. The denial that I have finally reached that point in my life, that tipping point where life is different. Anger at time for moving on when I don't feel ready. Shame with myself for not being ready. Anger and sadness that it feels so often like my family has moved on without me and my presence or lack thereof has no effect on their normal. Then it hit me how unfair that was. My normal is so incredibly different now, so is theirs. My presence in my home or lack thereof changes both of those normals. It's not that I'm not a part of their lives, it's that my presence in their lives is different and changing. All I can do for now and forever is choose joy with what I'm given.

Just some of the precious few I hold on to.

My time at home was incredible. I had so many things that I wanted to do and so many places on my list to visit. I ended up doing next to none of them. Instead, I puzzled, I Skip-Boed late into the night, I watched movies, I played countless board games, I ate, I slept, I ran. I lived like I was home, because I was. I relished in the comfort of it all. There is a song that I listen to on a pretty regular basis called Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) by Sun Tan, just like This is Water by David Foster Wallace, this song keeps me grounded when I need a reminder as to what is important in life. It seems that every time I listen to it, it becomes just a little bit more real. In this song, there are a couple of lines that hit me hard while I was home. The first was, "Friends come and go, but with the precious few, you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps between geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young". Moving to Albania taught me who I needed, who I wanted, who wanted me, and also that it is important to keep up my end of that deal. As we grow old, our social circles always shrink to those few crucial people, but the suddenness of my departure caused that shrinking to happen all at once, something I have grown to be thankful for because I know the relationships I have can stand every test. My circle is small, but it is mighty. The other line is, "Be kind to your siblings, they're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future". The older I get, the more I adore my siblings, and the more I hope that the likeliness of us hanging out until we are old and grey is really high. Again, knowing what I know now, I wish I could go back and be more patient with them, spend more time with them, appreciate them, when they were young. So there is always that pang of guilt and regret at all of the time I feel I've wasted. Time has won again, but alas, I am older and wiser now.

Now I'm back, and the reality of being an adult came crashing down just minutes after darkening my own doorstep. A pipe on my water tank had burst, my entire roof was soaked, and the mold on the bathroom ceiling that I had until that moment attributed to the lack of airflow had spread throughout the kitchen and bedroom. So now it's clean up time, which will soon be followed by plumber time, drying time, then finally painting time. Here's to hoping that jet-leg recovery time will come soon, but until then, here's to taking life one day at a time and choosing joy every step of the way.