It's All the Hardest Part.

The longer that I'm in the States, the more I find myself saying "The hardest part about being away from Honduras is ..." And you can fill in the blank. It changes every day.

It's knowing that everyone has moved back to Honduras for another school year, but I didn't.

It's realizing that there are new teachers to love my kids.

It's seeing how much STUFF I have that I don't need.

It's not being able to adequately communicate my feelings to anyone.

It's missing my friends and the life we had all created together.

It's knowing that I'm hurting my friends and family here when I only talk about how much I miss my friends from Honduras.

It's trying to realize that it's okay to love Honduras and the States at the same time.

It's not being there to walk with my kids in the parades or to play with them at recess.

It's everything.

Everything about moving back is hard.

The only people I want to talk to are the people who experienced Honduras with me. The hardest people to talk to are the people who experienced Honduras with me. The only pictures I want to look at are the ones I took in Honduras. The hardest pictures to look at are the ones I took in Honduras.

When trying to explain exactly what it is about being out of Honduras that is so difficult, I came across an article titled "The Hardest Part of Travel No One Talks About". And while I don't exactly agree with every sentence of the article, there was one part that I knew was written for me.

But the sad part is once you've done your obligatory visits for being away for a year; you're sitting in your childhood bedroom and realize nothing has changed. You're glad everyone is happy and healthy and yes, people have gotten new jobs, boyfriends, engagements, etc., but part of you is screaming don't you understand how much I have changed? And I don't mean hair, weight, dress or anything else that has to do with appearance. I mean what's going on inside your head. The way your dreams have changed, the way you perceive people differently, the habits you're happy you lost, the new things that are important to you. You want everyone to recognize this and you want to share and discuss it, but there's no way to describe the way your spirit evolves when you leave everything you know behind and force yourself to use your brain in a real capacity, not on a written test in school.

Things are, more or less, the same as when I left. The same clothes are hanging in my closet, the same blankets are on my bed, the same food is still stocking the fridge, the same television shows are playing on TV, my family's routines are pretty much the same.

BUT I'M DIFFERENT.

I'm so different than when I left.

The differences are hard to explain. They aren't visible differences (unless you count my new found affinity for wedges), but they are REAL differences. How can I expect others to understand my differences when I can't even fully understand them myself?

As we worked so hard to learn in Grade 1 and 2-- differences aren't bad, differences are just different. And sometimes they can be hard to learn to live with.

Right now they're really hard to live with.