One crazy finish line

I am incredibly grateful for the past year. My life here has been surreal. It has been hilarious. It has been difficult, sad, happy, frustrating, confusing, boring, exciting, bizarre, lonely, relaxing, inspiring and amazing. Many times I verged on the edge of deleting this blog. I think blogs are dumb to have. They are presumptuous. But in between hating myself for having a blog, I occasionally enjoyed using work time to figure out how to write again. In between hating what I wrote, I occasionally enjoyed reminiscing about where I was mentally at each step of the way in this strange parallel universe. So thanks for reading I guess, I sometimes resented you for upholding a phantom pressure to write and for prying into my personal life. How dare you!

Anyways, Oh! where to begin to end…

I agreed to go to Japan because I was looking for a place to go for a year or less. They said they would pay, so I said OK, Japan.

I knew nothing about Japan coming in. I learned maybe I should know more before I go to someplace and have to establish a life.

I saw the Japanese language as the big scary OZ. I watched the curtain get pulled down.

I thought I was coming here to teach English. I realized that was not going to happen.

There came a point where this stopped being an experience and became life. This meant I was free to openly dislike the way things were done, without feeling ungrateful or culturally insensitive. In theory, JET is a good idea. A great idea! Someone should tell my co-workers about this idea.

But I, one large bumbling apologizing sweaty faux pas, carried on. When Coach John Wooden passed away a few weeks ago, one of his quotes resurfaced in my mind, and it struck me as the rallying cry of my last 12 months.

“Do not let what you can’t do, interfere with what you can do.” Nice words Coach.

School and work wasn’t everything though. Of course under these circumstances it sometimes felt like it was. (note: Japanese people work a lot) Work was what landed me on this island, and kept me from getting off, so I struggled to redefine my existence otherwise. I don’t know many people who would choose to go back to middle school, let alone go back to middle school as the friendless, communicatively challenged foreigner.

The closer to the end I got, the more flips my stomach started doing. Ending this was way more nerve-wracking than beginning it.  And when it came time to leave, when the ship pulled away, I started to understand more about why I felt this way. Each face from the pier waving goodbye was a challenge and a gift for me. It wasn’t until I scanned all these faces that I could see a summation of what I did this year. Leaving that behind hurt.

We often talked about how this was a blip in real time, how we were living on an alternate plane of existence and when it was over our bodies felt they were going back to where we left off. I’m trying to focus on how I’ve changed and what things I want to take away from this experience, and I hope I can convince myself I’m going somewhere new.