Resettling. Readjusting. Pure Torture: Tomato-Tomahto.

I have been meaning to write since I last posted, but it seems as though this crazy life I returned to decided to eat me alive and spit me out. I know I have missed a few details of my trip still- but I really just need to get this off my chest...

If I thought I was an emotional rollercoaster abroad, it has been nothing like my past month home. I don't think I have cried so consistently all my life. At first, on the ride home, from TX to MN, I couldn't stop thinking and worrying about how much my life would be different when I walked off that plane. I had no idea what I was getting myself into- it was a completely different feeling than 5 months ago when I walked off the plane in Santiago thinking to myself the same thing; that was a "good" and exciting nervous, this new feeling was a bad, dreadful kind. Throughout this blog I have been trying to express my fear of coming back, attempting to take the person I had become the past 4 months and placing that person in MN. Little by little it has become easier, but I know it will be a long, gruesome process.

 

So many things have changed in my life- with my parents, grandparents, friends, boyfriend. It is difficult to know that they are looking at me, Allyson, same skin, same hair, same eyes, and smile- yet what they don't understand is what that skin has been through, feeling the Viña del Mar sunburn, or the biggest and most beautiful stars those eyes have ever seen, or the smile that responded to so many caring people, the Spanish mistakes and improvements that came through that mouth, or the amount of laughter expressed during a night on the dance floor. Even the way my name was said "Ell-y-son" or spelt so creatively on Starbucks cups throughout South America. All of these things, characteristics, that my parents gave to me, the people that helped form me, have been through so much more than what can be explained. Although I may look the same, my face may be a little tanner, my pace a little slower, my hair dyed darker- I don't fit in that skin anymore. Yet the expectation is, that I should. People have known me for years, I look the same as when I came back, therefore why should I be any different. I had a great experience, fantastic, now you're back in America. Get with it.

The difficulty is, without boring you with my sob story, is that even though the surroundings around me are the same, I find it so incredibly more difficult to deal with then when my surroundings were foreign to me. I knew coming home would be hard, and even though I try to tell myself that I need to get back to normal, I find myself at a loss, crying all over again at the confusion I feel. I miss Chile, I really do, but what I find strange is the extreme emotion I feel, constantly. For example, my mom and I were watching a documentary about earth quakes in South America. Chile came up, and as the TV came to life with the Chilean sea and the panoramas of Santiago, I couldn't help but feel totally alone in my own home, silent tears coming down my face as I stared at the screen at the host country I left behind. 

Even though I was so happy to be home for the first week or so, I slowly realized I wasn't going back. That these weird feelings I had been having weren't going away. No matter how many stories or pictures I wanted to show people, they weren't actually interested.

Moving back to school proved to be a whirlwind as well. The cold weather just made wanting the beach so much worse. I found that being trapped in my new bedroom is possibly the worst thing for me-of which I spend over $50 printing off pictures to hang up. The hectic schedule has been thrown upon me with constant homework, working, attempting to reconnect with friends, while at the same time that feeling still won't go away.

I think the most overwhelming thing for me while in school, has been being in my education classes and being completely overwhelmed. I think about "real life" coming up in just a year and I practically hyperventilate. There is no way to explain going from this totally unreal world and being spit out into harsh reality. 

The last depressing point-PROMISE- is realizing that there is no way to address this confusion and disorientation. I want so many different things in my life now, but fitting those goals into this life I have already established for myself seems next to impossible. Finding that balance between realistic goals and shooting for the moon is a difficult task right now- and I don't know how long it will last.

What I do know is how much traveling affects me. When I went to Guatemala, I was the same way except no one was able to tell me I was allowed to be different, it just naturally happened. At that time I was only 15 and I based my life goals around what I had just experienced. It ignited my passion for traveling and left me hungry for more. It inspired me to go abroad three more times, to develop a love for Latin American culture and a desire to live and be immersed in it. As the years passed, I lost a little of that drive- but was totally reintroduced and fell completely, if not more, in love with it. I am realizing the 15 year old me wasn't crazy, it is who I am. Being in these experiences makes me feel more myself than anything has ever allowed me to feel. 

So as I continue on this emotional rollercoaster, I find my happiest moments of the day are when I see some of my group members around campus, or stare at my "Chile" collage in my bedroom, listening to music that triggers a great memory or chatting with some friends on Facebook. 

I regain that sense of true happiness, if even for a moment. It is really the strangest thing. All of the things I learned while abroad- the "me" I became- comes rushing back, and I am at peace, at least for awhile.