"To Leave is to Die a Little"

I finally understand this statement. I think that it wouldn’t really matter whether I was leaving Saturday or Tuesday – no matter whether I leave sooner or later, I would have to deal with the incredible, sudden rush of emotion that I am experiencing right now.

I want to go home. I do. I want to be back in the United States, back in my native country, with my native language, my native culture, and everything that goes along with that. I’ve always been a wanderer. I’ve never been happy in one place for too long. But the biggest lesson that I have learned this year is that at some point, you have to recognize your roots. You have to come to an understanding of who you are, why you are the way you are, and you have to be okay with it. I used to want to be “Germanized,” used to glorify the German language and culture, placing it above my own.

But this year has taught me to fall in love with my American-ness. I have learned what it really means to be an American. I’ve realized how my upbringing in the United States has shaped my attitudes, my beliefs, my values, and everything that I am. Most importantly, I’ve learned to be proud of that and never to place anyone else’s “way of life” above my own only because it’s different. It’s different, and it’s great, but it’s not “mine,” and it never will be. I will always be an American, and that fact will always shape who I am.

I have learned to appreciate my home. Nomad that I am, I am always wishing that I could be someplace else. When I’m in Seattle, I wish I had the palm trees of Arizona or the medieval flair of Germany, and vice versa. But now, after being away for so long, I feel that Seattle will be more special to me than it has been before. Nowhere else can I walk the waterfront, directly at the foot of the skyscrapers of downtown, smelling the salt of Elliot Bay and watching the fishing boats come in and out. Nowhere else can I wander Pike Place Market, with its turn-of-the-century, funky atmosphere, and experience what an American market really is. Nowhere else can I drive down I-90 with the windows down and the sunroof open, my favorite song on the radio, and the green, rolling foothills of the Cascades all around me. This is my home, and it’s no “better” than anyone else’s anywhere else in the world – but it’s mine, and it is unique.

The year is ending the same way that it began: suddenly. I remember back in August how panicked I was that the departure date had snuck up on me, and now, almost 12 months later, it has literally snuck up on me again. There doesn’t seem to be enough time to explore my thoughts and sort out my emotions – it’s just so much, so fast.

Yes, I want to go home. But I think back on everything that this year has been and my heart hesitates. It has been a great year, it has been an awful year, it has been everything in between. I’ll never forget the evenings spent in pubs with friends, drinking robust, frothy beer and relishing the knowledge that I am experiencing something, living something that so few people will ever have the chance or the desire to do. I’ll think back on afternoons spent punting around on the Neckar in a Stocherkahn, admiring the colorful and happily sagging houses along the water’s edge. I’ll remember how hard it was to be away from family and country during Christmas but smile at the beautiful pictures of a snow-laden medieval town and the memories of the beautiful Christmas markets, sipping hot, spiced wine, that I have received in return. I’ll reflect on how much I hated the never-ending lecture periods but grin a little when I remember how amazing it was to sit there and listen to my lectures and write term papers in a different language. I’ll smell the rich, earthy aroma of the farms as I run through my old jogging route in my dreams and taste the bittersweet coffee that I drank at outdoor cafes while gazing out over the marketplace and thinking, “There is nowhere else in the world I’d rather be.”

As much as I know that I need to go home, the biggest part of me does not want to leave right now. It’s painful to think that this is now all over. Just like this, it’s all coming to an end. So sudden, so unexpected, even though I’ve been waiting for this for months. Standing before the very thing I’ve been dying to do – get on that plane and return to America – I am now ripped to shreds by the sudden, unanticipated resistance of my own emotions. It’s because when I get on that plane, there is no longer any turning back. It will be, once and for all, over. Never again can I have this experience, never again will I be a college student in Europe, studying in a small town called Tübingen. Never. The finality is crushing, and my mind begins throwing out excuses to try to prevent the inevitable. “You can’t leave! There is so much you haven’t done yet!”

Yes, that's the most painful part of this whole process of leaving: the knowledge that it has to end. I feel helpless. It's a sobering feeling when you realize that you cannot stop time. It has to go on.

I feel exactly the same way that I did when I left ASU to leave for Germany. Just as when I left Arizona, I am now leaving the world that I've spent a year building for myself. And when I get on that train to Frankfurt it will all go up in smoke. It's over. Done. We all say "we'll come back." And we will. But it won't be the same, not by a long shot. The world we've known here is, in a sense, going to disappear. And I suppose that's why it feels as though I am dying a little. To leave, as they say, is to die a little.

The worst part of the whole experience is that it calls your very identity into question. Who am I? Where do I belong? I feel at home on both continents - which one is truly home? The nomad in me wants a real, definite answer. I belong here, in Germany, and yet I do not. Seattle is my home, and yet it is not. There is no answer to these questions.

Real closure for this experience, I suppose, is not possible in this moment, no matter when I leave. There will always be the voices of hesitation, of regret, of missed opportunities, of fond memories refusing to be cast aside, that beg for me to stay where I am here and now. But I’ve learned something else this year: I can’t just stay. Life keeps going, whether you’re along for the ride or not. It HAS to end. It has to end so that something new can begin. The incredible impact of this year will fade into the past, and with it the clarity of the emotions it contained. But if it didn’t, we would be stuck forever in the present instead of looking forward. Here and now is beautiful, but it would become a wasteland if it never changed. Kirsten Dunst summed it up beautifully in the film Elizabethtown:

"You have five minutes to wallow in the delicious misery. Enjoy it. Embrace it. Discard it. And proceed."

It is time to move on, to begin the next chapter. Tomorrow I'm going to get up early, take my camera, and go out to my old jogging route through the farmland above the student village. I'm going to take pictures of these beautiful Swabian farmhouses, inhale deeply and smell the scent of the freshly-tilled crops, and sit on the bench that overlooks the whole valley. I'll go to my last class and pick up my last certificate. I'll go to the Altstadt, wander around, soak it in, and take as many pictures as I can. Then I'll close my bank account and move out of my room.

I'll get on the train, and I'll watch the "Tübingen Hbf" signs fade away as I speed toward Frankfurt. I will finish the year-in-review video before I leave Germany, encapsulate this experience, and then I will get on that plane and step from one world back into another. And that will be it.

I will be back someday, and hopefully not too long from now. There isn’t any question about that. But for now, it’s time to go home. It’s time to go home and embrace the future once again, even though it's painful. It's time to go, the same way that I did on August 16th, 2005.

Goodbye, Germany.