Thoughts from the Plane

The map indicates we’re somewhere over Eastern Canada, slowly plotting along our 7000 mile course. With only 2 ½ hours to go, the nostalgic harmony of Coldplay wets my eyes with sentiment, with anxiety, with thrill. I can’t let myself believe that I’ll be on US soil tonight, that I’ll get to talk to my family, that it’s all over. I don’t know where the months have gone, or how I’ll adjust to being home. How will this person I’ve become—the strong, vivacious, confident me—hold up among the pettiness, the shallowness, and the consumerism? I worry that the insecurities will return, the feelings of not being good enough, those things that I worked so hard to obliterate this past year. Will the frustration, the tension I so often feel with my mom, Calvin, and sister be any different? I hope I can relate to people. I am not looking forward to having the same conversations over and over, or experiencing the loneliness of being surrounded by too much meaningless excess. Will the needle of my internal compass lose its direction? I’m scared I will start to flounder, that the choices and decisions that once seemed perfectly clear will begin to muddle, that everything I was once so sure of, so excited about will gradually fade. I’ve been so excited to come home and now that it’s so close, the uncertainty is rising in me. Is this really what I want?
Yea, it is. I’m ready to get on with the Scholarship Program. I’m ready to discover who I really am now. To see how this Dona really is different from the girl who flew to Bangkok on a one-way ticket last November. I left fleeing the loss of a person I loved in absolute blind faith, in search of the real me, and in search of a new direction for my life. I think I’ve found both and I’m excited to share both with my family and friends at home. It’s just scary going back to a place I know will not have changed at all, when I’ve changed so much.