2 months left (asi)

I've really neglected this. I guess i've felt that in a way the months have smeared together- my feelings here have been essentially unchanged. I have good days and bad days but they are no longer strongly distinguishable. I havent had a break down in a long time- I haven't even cried. Nothing has been bad. But if i'm being really honest, things haven't been good either. in that they havent been great. i feel like this year has progressed as a sort of pendulum. I had my worst days in my first month. But i also had my best nights- and they were really remarkable. i felt at times completely ecstatic, just so excited. it progressed somewhat throughout the next few months, but it has come to the point now where I'm just solidly stuck in place. the pendulum sways occasionally, but even when i'm sad its the same dull sadness- and vice versa. i enjoy going out at night but i dont look forward to it. i know what to expect. we do the same things every weekend. i do not like school- my classmates are not people that i would ever be friends with in real life, and ive stopped feeling the need to try to befriend them. it just doesnt click. the other kids in the school are ok, but im just exhausted. i know that making friends just isnt- real. there is always a layer of pity beneath our conversations. and my words are so stilted. i am good at slovak- for an exchange student. i have read 266 pages of harry potter without using a dictionary. i speak relatively smoothly with my host families and havent used english with them in a long time. there are a few friends that i speak slovak with. but i still have that diluted, pathetic personality. i have lost so much enthusiasm- i can barely joke, i have no come backs, and intellectual conversations are essentially impossible. these things are better with my host families, so ive started to just want to be with them and not talk to anyone else. thats a bit of a lie- i have my english teacher friends that i have a good time with- in english. i have my friends that i go out with on the weekends, but i still speak so much english with them because at this point its just habitual. it would feel to weird to switch over now. and every time i try they give me about 30 seconds to show them i can speak well, i mess something up, and they go back to english. i cant stand it. in terms of the pendulum and explaining it- the first month i was both terrified and hopeful. i was so afraid that the rotary rules would wreck my exchange.. and just the whole set up of it. and at first it did in a way. i felt extremely tied down at a time when i wanted to feel my independence. eventually that feeling died down, particularly when i started becoming closer to my host families, and when i stopped wanting to go out all the time. but i was also really hopeful when i went out and made new friends and felt like a celebrity. like there was a chance that the whole year could be as magical as those few nights. eventually i learned that neither extreme was true. at this point im neither scared nor hopeful. i have two months left and things have been the same for a long time. nothing is very bad, and nothing is extraordinary.

i am admittedly in a sad-ish mood today. i never planned on writing an entry like this. any other day i would be much more positive- but i also think that this is very realistic. to be clear im not unhappy here. and i hate blaming anything on slovakia- i feel protective of it in a way, because it really doesnt have anything to its name besides a hockey player or two. ive been thinking if i would have been happier in another country. and probably yes- if i had been in an exquisite environment with better food and a warmer climate.. yes. but that really only applies to italy and southern france. so theres not too much i can blame on slovakia.

i dont know how much ive changed. i cant put my finger on anything. i think that i have drawn into myself when ive run into conflict, so i havent really allowed myself to change very much. i also never met anyone here who ive loved more than my friends back home. so i think they will find me largely unchanged. but i wont know until i return. i think that i just never stopped belonging in america. i wasnt running from anything, and i hadnt been lonely there in a long time. i had already been to 12 countries in europe, and then asia, south america, australia, and central america. i knew what was out there- i just didnt know what life was out there. but the life i had was already beautiful.

i wrote this today:

I feel like I’ve been living behind a window. I tap all day, and someone comes to me. But when they speak it’s the dulled sound of transference. The glass muffles their voice and I can only struggle to understand. And then I speak and they can’t hear me either, so they just tell me again and again to come out from behind the window. But all I can do is wipe it cleaner, chip through it. In the end I’m left encased in glass, and sometimes it’s just easier to remain there behind the panes alone with the fragments of the country I belonged in. And it’s in those days when they stop coming to me. I should be standing there with a hammer, pounding my fists against a wall that will never shatter, raising my voice and dancing some American dance so that they’ll laugh at me and let me out for a while. But I get tired. I can’t tap anymore, and I don’t think I want to, because I really never fell in love. I wrote when I came here that I hoped to leave with my heart split between two countries, but America has left no room for anything else. In a way I’m surprised I hadn’t known it before- how long has my heart been streaked with red soil and magnolias? And without my language I am left with so little. There are days when I forget the glass still separates me- but walking home in the rain and seeing my neighbor whom I’ve never spoken to standing in the street reminds me that he’ll never ask me to come in from the cold, or where I’ve left my umbrella, because it’s just too difficult to see through a window in the rain.