I have now been back in England for a week and a half. I have thus been gone from Mexico, the country in which I have stayed for the longest uninterrupted period of my life, for 10 days. And this means that I am, to put it bluntly, a bit screwed up. If I stop to think about it, try and put my finger on where I am emotionally, culturally, what I’m currently doing with my life, I get dizzy from a trilingual barrage of worries, hopes and dreams, and reasonings. Because of this confusion I have mostly chosen to spend this week relishing in the simple and pleasing task of clearing out cupboards. A simple idea. And yet in digging elbow-deep through drawers, under beds and into my childhood memories, the realisation of how much has changed in my life means that I wasn’t just clearing out a cupboard; I was clearing out dusty physical memorabilia of a happy childhood and adolescence. I rediscovered poems I wrote as an eleven-year old rosy-cheeked beanpole; moth-eaten stuffed toys which I’d cradled in my chubby arms as a clueless toddler, and so many maps, tickets, receipts and pointless hoarded ‘souvenirs’ that I realised my bedroom was even more cluttered than my brain. I’m still only halfway through the clearout, and still have a lot of incarnations of Claire to rediscover.
Between wallowing in self-analysis, I have also been doing what I haven’t been able to do for over a year. Gossiping, giggling and gorging myself with my English friends and family. Any plans I have expressed to live away from London are a contradiction of the value I attach to the friends I have here. I feel a bit like a spoilt rich girl who appears to collect things and never use them, leave them at the back of the cupboard, or neglect them and turn my attentions to new, (say, Mexican) models. Appearances can be deceiving though. A facebook message here and there, a visit twice a year, a birthday wish, is nowhere near enough to show how much I hold on to them for dear life. Along with my family, my pocketful of school friends, ex-colleagues and randomly acquired friends mean more to me than even the longest, fanciest of words can describe.
And tomorrow I throw myself back into Paris. A decent way to book-end the Year Abroad.
I don’t yet feel ready to write about how I feel about having left Mexico. I hope I can be forgiven for this. And also for having already spent a chunk of my student loan on a return flight to Mexico for New Years. This is not an ending. It’s a cliff-hanger, even for me.
