I live a life where being home for 17 days is considered a blessing - considered a lot - more than last year - considering the friends that you want to catch up with, the family to hug, your dogs, who freak out when they hear the Skype noise, because it means they hear your voice, and that makes you want to cry, because they don't understand why you aren't there.
Hell, there are times that you don't understand why you aren't there - when big events happen, good or bad, and you find out time zones away. When all you need is to talk to your mom, but it is daytime there, and she is at work. Or it is 3AM there, and she is asleep.
Yet despite that, your feet still move. Your soles pound the earth, and you wander - to learn. To experience. To fail. To think.
One adventure is being put on pause, as I leave yet another family behind. This time, though, instead of leaving them in trees and snow, I leave them to sand and starless nights.
I'm happy to be studying away - I really am. I need time away from this space. But the prospect of leaving has been pushed to the back of my mind, avoided, for so long, that now, when I go home, leave this place, in a time much less than two weeks, I am nostalgic. And sad. And wanting to hold on to this community - but you can't always old on, because you have to let go, and breathe, and move. Just now, you are doing all of that without the ever-present safety net of friends.
Doing all of that without the familiar. Without the comfort.
But, as I was told during my Marhaba week (which seems so long ago, but it has been 2 years since I started this adventure of a lifetime during Candidate Weekend) to this strange, wonderful, and often befuddling-in-the-best-possible-way university, 'there is no growth in comfort.'
And so as I begin my travels to home, to Ghana, back home for a mere 48 hours (hours I am so grateful for), then to New York, I am ready to start stepping away from the safety net, away from the nest, of NYUAD, and begin to walk to a solo drummer.
Though in doing so, I know my friends, my family, are doing the same, and that 'if I just reach out, I'm not alone.' When I reach out, I will find another person reaching out as well.
So Sama, consider this an early farewell, as I sit in this purple-gray chair, remembering again how unique of a place I have chosen - or rather, has chosen me - becuase someone, somewhere composed this school, this community, in a way that just works.
(Though there are moments where we get frustrated with each other, as family does)
<3
Hell, there are times that you don't understand why you aren't there - when big events happen, good or bad, and you find out time zones away. When all you need is to talk to your mom, but it is daytime there, and she is at work. Or it is 3AM there, and she is asleep.
Yet despite that, your feet still move. Your soles pound the earth, and you wander - to learn. To experience. To fail. To think.
One adventure is being put on pause, as I leave yet another family behind. This time, though, instead of leaving them in trees and snow, I leave them to sand and starless nights.
I'm happy to be studying away - I really am. I need time away from this space. But the prospect of leaving has been pushed to the back of my mind, avoided, for so long, that now, when I go home, leave this place, in a time much less than two weeks, I am nostalgic. And sad. And wanting to hold on to this community - but you can't always old on, because you have to let go, and breathe, and move. Just now, you are doing all of that without the ever-present safety net of friends.
Doing all of that without the familiar. Without the comfort.
But, as I was told during my Marhaba week (which seems so long ago, but it has been 2 years since I started this adventure of a lifetime during Candidate Weekend) to this strange, wonderful, and often befuddling-in-the-best-possible-way university, 'there is no growth in comfort.'
And so as I begin my travels to home, to Ghana, back home for a mere 48 hours (hours I am so grateful for), then to New York, I am ready to start stepping away from the safety net, away from the nest, of NYUAD, and begin to walk to a solo drummer.
Though in doing so, I know my friends, my family, are doing the same, and that 'if I just reach out, I'm not alone.' When I reach out, I will find another person reaching out as well.
So Sama, consider this an early farewell, as I sit in this purple-gray chair, remembering again how unique of a place I have chosen - or rather, has chosen me - becuase someone, somewhere composed this school, this community, in a way that just works.
(Though there are moments where we get frustrated with each other, as family does)
<3
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