#13 Saying Goodbye

Life in Japan is coming to a close now. I’ve been in Japan for 2 years and it’s gone by quickly and slowly. I’ve spent one year in Kurashiki, Okayama and one year in Shiroi and Matsudo, Chiba which is right by Tokyo. Life has been interesting and difficult and it’s time to head back. But I find myself growing sentimental as I’m tearing through my apartment, trying to decide what to throw away and what to keep, what to sell and how to ship things to different places. I’ve met some of the kindest people in Japan and my heart is breaking at the thought of having to say goodbye to these wonderful people. I wish I didn’t have to say goodbye to them, but I know that I must. (Seriously why haven’t teleporters been invented yet?) I’ve grown so much in the last two years. When I left America to come to Japan I was a big hot mess. I didn’t even know how much of a mess I was either. That first year in Japan was rough. It was really rough and I was working in a company that I didn’t meld well with at all. I spent the majority of that first year just trying not to bite off people’s heads from all of the stress I was under. However the upside of that was all of the traveling I was able to afford. The company paid well and so I was able to go on a lot of different trips to see Japan. This past year I spent working in the public school system. I definitely meshed with this system a lot better than the first company even if they pay significantly less. I haven’t been nearly as stressed and unhappy as I was the previous year and I’ve had a good chance to reflect on things. I’ve learned so much about myself and how I behave and how I react to things. I’m proud because I discovered these things about myself, by myself. I’ve been writing all year long, mostly at school to help keep my thoughts from exploding all over the place, and writing things has been a great help. We all know that I’ve never been much of a blogger seeing as I haven’t been able to keep up with this blog very well at all. But I have been writing. However the journals I’ve written are not going to be published due to the ramblings and sometimes unpleasantness of the content. But writing has been a way for me to cleanse out the negative thoughts I have so that I won’t keep thinking about them all day long. Through my journals I’ve been able to get out a lot of the poisonous thoughts that were lurking inside of me at the time. It’s been a very beneficial process for me. I never knew I could write so much to be honest.

While I can definitely say I am more enlightened as a person than I was two years ago, I do know that I still have a long way to go. But who I am today is different from who I was when I left. And for that, I am glad. But now that time is dwindling before my departure I feel the anxiety rising up again, hence the writing. Nobody likes to change. Change is scary and change is hard even though it helps us grow. I’m not looking forward to the hardships this change will bring, but I am looking forward to seeing my friends and family again, to attend conventions again, to speak English outside of the classroom again. I’m looking forward to being able to read my mail and to not have to worry about international charges and shipping anymore. I’m looking forward to going back to school and studying costume design and to finally pursue a calling that I realized I had all along but was blocked by all of my other goals. (Aka going to Japan being the first life goal I ever had.) I finally know what I want to do with my life and I’m excited to get started on it. I just had to write it out and remind myself of all the good things in my future since my pre-move anxiety is only reminding me of the bad.