The Waiting

Luna, waiting to go home.

Yesterday, Jess wrote, "I’m sick of restarting my life. I just want to live in a place and stay there."

We are becoming an echo chamber.  She titled her blog post "And I thought I was Bohemian," and it's apt because we each thought we were people we're not: we are not world travelers, professional expats, jetset adventurers, or rootless bums.  Before Buenos Aires, I was sure--I would have placed bets--that I would live abroad for at least two years.  I had told Jess that if teaching ESL in Buenos Aires didn't work out, I'd move to Korea or Peru.  Once I'd built up some TESL cred, maybe I'd try to live a while in Spain, illegally tutoring  English in Barcelona or wwoofing in the mountains.  The world was my shellfish.

Living in Buenos Aires, I have learned that everything I thought I wanted is actually not what I want at all.

Like Jess, I want to stay someplace.  I want an apartment and a job and a dog and a favorite coffee shop and friends who don't disappear every other week.  I was in Spokane for almost two years, and I had only really established myself there in the second year.  Made Spokane friends and Spokane professional connections.  The baristas at the Rocket knew me better than my own family.  Then I graduated and moved, leaving my life behind.  I spent a temporary three months in Pennsylvania and have now been here for four months, the most temporary place of all of them.  The floor keeps falling out from under me, and each time I have to build it back up again.

Every day, I remind myself not to rush my last weeks in Argentina.  Never again in my life will I live in a foreign country, with no job, in a house as unique as this one.  Jess and I--BFFs--won't hang out again for a long time after I leave Milwaukee in March, and that will be a rough transition.  But even now, most of our conversations are about what restaurants we'll go to when we get back, what jobs we'll get, where we'll live.  We don't talk about Argentina.  There's nothing left to say.  Anymore, it feels like we've learned all we're going to learn about ourselves and about this city.  Important, invaluable things, for sure---but now all we're doing is waiting to go home.

I still don't know if autumn will find me in Pittsburgh or Portland.  I don't know where I'll work, what jobs I'm even qualified for outside a coffeeshop, or if there are even jobs to be had.  But I, too, am sick of restarting my life.  And I'm done waiting for the next thing.