"Don't cry because it's over. Smile, because it happened." - Dr Seuss
I'm sitting on my bed in my room. My mind is wondering somewhere else and I find it hard to concentrate on writing... Tomorrow it has been a week since I arrived back to Finland from Morocco. I'm still finding it pretty hard to describe my feelings. What should I write about my feelings since I can't put them in order even in my own mind. Confusion, that might be the best word for the moment.
The day when I arrived back home (why do I find it so hard to use the word "home"? Where is my home actually? That's the question I have been thinking ever since I came back), I felt like I had arrived to a foreign country. On the other hand, I felt like it was just yesterday when I had left, everything looked the same. The first day I was feeling pretty good: seeing my family after a long time, wondering everything around me like it was my first time in Finland, eating a good Finnish meal... yes, I felt like I'm going to be fine that I will get used to my life again. But the second day, the reality hit me. This is it, I thought. I'm in Finland now. My life in Morocco is over. Over. That really crushed me. I felt like I couldn't breath. I saw only strange things around me. Things that had been part of my life for 25 years but that looked so distant now, like I had never experienced them before. I was walking in my town and I saw only a few people on the street. I smiled to a stranger but she didn't smile me back. I felt like I had been sent to another planet.
Now, after a week, I'm starting to feel that I might adapt to the life style of this planet again. Morocco is in my mind all the time, but I don't feel so desperately sad anymore when thinking about it. I have started to work on my thesis again and today I went to the hospital where I start my internship on the 1st of August. I'm actually feeling really excited to start to do something that I really like! Also, I enjoy going out for a walk and see the beautiful nature around me. Yes, I'm really blinded by how green the nature really is! And even how disturbed I was by the extreme calmness around when I arrived, now I'm starting to respect it. After all, we don't need all that huzzle and buzzle all the time!
There are moments when I think, was I really in Morocco or was it only a dream? I wake up at night in my bed and it takes me a while before I realize where I am. I still get caught in sadness while thinking all the experiences I lived there and trying to accept that they are over now. Yes, they may be over in the present, but they live inside for the rest of my life. The thing that keeps me going, that gives me motivation to continue my life in Finland is the thought that I didn't say good-bye to Morocco. I hate to say good byes. That's why I always keep the hope inside of me that one day I will return to the place that I have left behind.
"You never really leave a place or person you love, part of them you take with you, while leaving a part of yourself behind.” -Unknown
