Well my oh my, it has been quite some time since I have written on the blog. I do sincerely apologize for not keep everyone up to date recently. And if you guys have any questions about my life here, ask away!! It will give me a big heads up to know that you guys are interested in what I am writing. It seems as though during these past four months I got kind of lost in, well, life. It's funny how sometimes I can feel so much like a stranger here and the fact that this isn't my normal life flashes brighter than a neon sign, while other times I just seem to float on as if nothing has or will ever change. Maybe that is a form of denial, but hey, no need for a self analysis at the moment. Let's talk about France! It's amazing how much easier things are to process in retrospect. I don't feel so blind and tangled up. Nice, hu? So here goes.
The end of January was mixed. I still hadn't dug completely out of my previous hole/rut, but there was a new exchange student, an Australian named Steph. Now, we are so beyond close and I consider her one of my best friends in the world, but I'll get to that later. We had been hearing about her at school for months and everyone was showing all the excitement that they hadn't shown when I first arrived and so that little pinch of jealous was starting to kick in. The minute she arrived in class I recognized that face, the one so readable to those who have felt the exact some way, scared shitless. I introduced myself after class and she sighed with so much relief when she realized the words coming from my life were English.
February showed up right around the corner and guess what? It was still as cold and gray as an icicle's bum. In other words, so very extremely uncomfortable and depressing. Even with all the sweaters, and tights under my jeans, and coats and twenty pounds of winter fat I'd accidentally put on, I was still freezing cold all the time. But what made it worse than anything was the darkness. Grey when I woke up and grey when I walked home from school at 6pm. There wasn't enough sunlight and winter needed to be over. On the other hand five months had passed and I was starting to feel pretty confident with my French, I had a close group of friends at school, and showing Steph around Chateauroux made it feel a million more times like home. Steph came along with a new attitude, more of a free willed one, let's say. And it was exactly what I needed. I had gotten my head so twisted around school and work that I wasn't even able to see all the other things surrounding me.
I had been putting up a smile and a strong face for a while, but I was wearing down and when the next AFS weekend came around I cracked. I lost it all. Things were getting hard in my family with three little sisters all in need of so much attention and parents who had no idea how to be with a teenager. I was hateful towards my body and all the weight I gained. I felt as though I was loosing all the progress I had made in French by speaking English with Steph, but I didn't want to lose a friend. School was way too hard for me, but I kept pushing and pushing myself with out communicating how difficult it had become thinking I could make it through. On top of it all, I was jealous of Steph because she had me to help her through the first months that I had fought through on my own. All this led to me sobbing on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night trying to explain where it all went wrong to my best friend, Abi, but not at all finding words in English or French.
No comments:
Post a Comment