Obstacles Overcome; Lessons Learned; Now What?: Angers (CL)

I can read for fun here. Men At Arms, by Terry Pratchett.

It was a somewhat more emotional experience than I expected, looking back at my first blog post. I was so enchanted by how pretty the city was - which has since become normal for me. Perhaps before I leave I should do some more walking around, just stopping to admire how pretty it all is again. It's also a reminder of my ongoing challenges. I talked about spending time trying to familiarize myself with the city because I don't trust my sense of direction (navigation since then has become much easier). But it's not just my sense of direction, really. I just deal with a lot of self-doubt in general. 

When I first arrived, my language skills were reasonably good, but I was afraid to speak anyway. I didn't trust myself to be able to speak well enough to not be looked down on despite how long I've been studying the language. What I learned is that much of what people pick up on and react to is not the level of your language but the confidence with which you speak. If you hold yourself with uncertainty, they assume your skill in the language is low. If you hold yourself with confidence, they assume your language level is good. Easier said than done, especially for people who have backgrounds anything like mine. If you spend your time making yourself as small as possible to avoid provoking conflict, making that switch is difficult. When I was younger I was involved in theater, and my directors would always remind us how acting could be a useful skill in real life as well. "If you're not confident, act it," they would say. Still, it is difficult to act in ways you wouldn't normally within the context of being inside your own life, stuck in your own body and your own clothes, without a character to play.

This is my biggest challenge. Coming from a background of trauma, how do you go about re-learning how to exist once you are safe (or safer than you were)? How do you try to make new homes for yourself when everything scares you? How do you try to turn the unfamiliar into the familiar while you look around you at all the people who just fundamentally do not understand your experiences, and you constantly feel like you just do not fit? How do you go about having the experiences you're supposed to have abroad when some days your biochemistry gets in the way? 

Looking back at my first blog post, I remembered the moment before I learned about the class I was placed in, sitting nervously in a classroom until a man walked in and began playing the piano. I remember relaxing, listening to the piano, and thinking, I'm going to be okay. I also mentioned my writing in that first post. During a period toward the beginning of my semester here, there was this sense of triumph, this joy that I had made it this far to the point at which I was the safest I'd ever been, mixed with some sadness for what I hadn't been able to experience before. During that period I wrote often, almost on a daily basis, about where I'd come from, about both the grief and the triumph of being safer than ever before. 

Cats help.

Before looking back at that blog post, I hadn't realized the ways in which I've changed since writing it. Daily life is a little easier now, even though I still face many of the same challenges. And I am learning, slowly, but I am learning that what I need to do first and foremost is accept the ways that I am and accommodate my needs. Other people aren't going to understand without an explanation, and that's okay. It is up to me when and where and with who I invest that effort. But first of all, before anybody else, I need to recognize what I can and can't do from moment to moment, and I need to react to that with kindness. 

I think before coming here, this was a concept I grasped intellectually, but had trouble imagining as a reality. Before coming here I would bury myself in work to escape, and work until I wasn't able to work anymore. I would burn myself out intentionally, over and over and over. Here, I have more time. I have begun to realize some ways I can use that time that are good for me. I have spent some time reading for fun, something I never have time for during the semester. I've made some playlists on Spotify, because music is healing. Every now and again I have dinner with the friends I've made here, and I Skype some of my friends from the United States. 

I've come up with hours to stay at school and do homework, and I make myself take breaks. I take walks on the trail behind my apartment. I have times when it's okay to do nothing other than what I feel like doing. 

Looking back at my first blog post, that's the moment that strikes me. Listening to the piano and thinking, I'm going to be okay. In many ways, my time abroad has been very difficult to me. But this idea is becoming more real, more achievable. The world is beginning to look more hopeful. I am learning how to accommodate myself. I will create spaces for myself and for those who benefit from those spaces. 

I'm looking forward to going home, which is at school, among friends. Because even though life here is easier now than it was, I am longing for a place where I can return to, where I have people who already know, where there is no more need to explain, but where I can talk freely. I don't think home will be unfamiliar now that I've been abroad. Going back to college housing and my friends and walking to the grocery store will be a return to the familiar. I have a found family, and I am so lucky.  

"Coming Home," from the collection Dream Works by Mary Oliver