Escape

So in three months--almost to the day--I will be headed to the Philippines to work as a student missionary. I have pangs of fear once in awhile, and for the last couple of nights I've dreamed that I'm already there. I am so scared, mostly because I don't know what to expect and I don't know what exactly I will be doing, or what I am supposed to bring, or what we eat, or what we do in our free time, or...anything, actually. I am scared that everyone will forget about me when I am gone. I know that is a little selfish, but what if I come back and no one really cares? It's a very real possibility. Everyone's lives will have gone on just fine without me. And I will come back a little different, maybe. I will have seen so many more things than my friends at school. I will have experienced a whole new culture, I will have lived right on the ocean in a tropical country for a whole eight months. I will have...maybe lived a little more? I think my life will be more "full."

I will miss my family and friends and America terribly. I will miss everything so so so so much, I know I will. But somehow, I think I will be okay. I think I will have fun, and I think I will meld in pretty well.

Sometimes, I am SO glad I am leaving. To be at school next year....to have another year of classes, to deal with all the junk that comes with friends and college...I kind of just want to escape. I don't want to be here to have to deal with it. Maybe that's cowardly or whatever, but I am just sort of glad I will be far away from things that I know would normally make me mad or frustrated.

I will be able to be who I am, without all the extra stuff. I will be able to be whoever I want. I will be able to be leader, I will be able to start fresh, to start over again. I will be able to have my own life experience, and make my own experience and my own friends and my own...whatever. I will be able to be who I want. I can push myself without having the guilt of others pushing me. I will be able to connect with people the way that I am supposed to. I can live without the social boundaries of having to "see" and "be seen" with others. I can just...be.

It will be the hardest thing I have ever done and the scariest thing I have ever experienced. It will be difficult and uncomfortable and I will want to go home. But I will have my escape, and in the process, I think it will become more than just an escape. I think it will become home, somehow. Maybe.