so far away today

It has now been two months since my last day working in Argentina. One month since being back in the US. I think I have tried to write this final blog post at least a dozen times. I tried recapping my final weeks and all my goodbyes, I drafted lists of the things I was thankful for this year and the things I miss like phantom limbs. I waxed poetic about the nature of goodbyes and the closing of chapters, each paragraph more trite than the last. Eventually I stopped trying to write and sent baleful looks towards my laptop with every day that passed. I kept waiting for it to feel right. I dont know if it will ever feel right, but I know I need to put a cap on this year of my life. I need to write the final chapter of this book to help feel like my year is truly finished. 

I don't know how to talk about my leaving, or my end of year just yet and frankly some of it I don't want to. Some of it is just for me. Moments that I will keep and treasure and hold close to my chest. It feels like too much to give those things to anyone else but those who shared them with me. 

I guess I will start with the question most people have asked me which is "What's next?" A lot of my family and friends expected this year to be a turning point in me finding some great direction in my life, where I would finally have an epiphany moment that led me to my life's purpose, but I am sorry to say that is just not the case. I've come to accept after a long time of trying to force a deep calling that I might never be the person who has one thing they are meant to do. It's a gift and a burden to be someone who can adapt to find joy and fulfilment in nearly anything. How am I supposed to choose one path when I have so many facets to my life that I enjoy? What I do know, is that this past year I have felt more happy, fulfilled, creative, and just more truly me than I have in a very long time. I would very much like to hold on to that. 

That brings us to what I'm doing now. For the next few months I am working with the ELCA as a short term recruiter for YAGM and other young adult ministries within the organization. I'll be driving around the Midwest talking about my time in YAGM, building connections within the young adult community, and hopefully finding the next round of people to head out on this crazy adventure. I'm excited to tell stories about the place I have spent a year loving, like me telling people about it and encouraging them to seek out their own stories somehow makes it feel all the more real. I spent the last week with the other short term recruiters (all of us having just gotten home from service) at orientation for the next group of YAGMS going out, and while at times it was hard and overwhelming to relive our own last few days before being sent abroad, mostly it was just extremely encouraging. We not only got to meet with the new volunteers and share with them our experiences but also got to lean on each other in those struggles and better know a lot of the staff and alumni on the YAGM team who could share in those feelings that we all were having being back. There is comfort in having community to sit in those times with you. Community that has been through, or is currently going through, the same thing. 

I'm also tackling the very exciting challenge of going back to school. Those who know me well know this is a very big deal for me. Its been years since I've tried to be a student and the last attempt didn't necessarily go well so I am taking it slow and accepting that perfection isn't possible or necessary. All that matters is I keep showing up. I'm starting slow with just a Spanish class and a humanities course, and I'm honestly really excited to keep growing my technical Spanish skills after a year of learning a completely colloquial side of the language.

I guess all I can say now is, I miss Argentina. 

I miss Argentina like the moon pulls the ocean. A dependable ebb and flow, boundless and profound. At times its a subdued low tide faintly licking at the shore, others its raging waters that tear apart ships and break levees. I spent my last two months there, thinking "what if I just stayed?" There were, and still are, opportunities there that could have me living a very comfortable life in Buenos Aires. I think about moving back on a daily basis. I wrestle with missing my found family and friends there, while also holding space for the joy of being reunited with my people here. I hate having come back to an America somehow even more filled with hate, and violence, and fear. Yet I know everywhere you go there are problems, and staying in Argentina wouldn't have saved me from those. Sometimes its like I am split in half and I cant reconcile the part of me that is still living in that little room above a chapel, where winter is summer, parakeets trill from telephone poles, and the air always smells like jasmine. 

This past year, this blog has been a place for me to catch my thoughts and capture a glimpse at where my head is at, so its probably fitting that this final post is a little scattered. I feel pretty scattered. But mostly I feel good. I am excited for the future, I'm excited to continue seeking that fulfillment I felt this past year, and I am excited for the day I can go back to Argentina and see all of my favorite places and people there. 

An immense thank you to everyone who followed along with me and supported me all year, to the people who made my time in Buenos Aires so magical, for the family I built in that city, and for the people who are walking with me now as I continue to get to know who I've become in this past year. 

I'll leave on this quote from one of my all time favorite books by Argentinian author Julio Cortázar, which reminds me that while missing something hurts, these memories we carry are blessings. That in those times where thoughts intrude and we are lost in past moments, we can learn from them, share them, hold them in tenderness and joy.