Living Life - Back in America

It wasn't easy knowing I was leaving my beloved Grenoble, the place that had become my home. I was happy there. I enjoyed the culture, lifestyle and people who had become a part of my life. But all good things come to an end; and so, I left my Grenoble apartment at 3:45am on the morning of May 22, 2014, knowing that would be the last time I would see this beautiful city again for a long while.

It was bitter-sweet, the return home. I had some amazing help at the airport, Oeli was the best travel dog ever and I got to drink my sorrows away on board, for free. I was greeted with a friendly smile from one of my great friends at the airport, who so graciously picked me up in D.C., and we drove back to begin another life in the States.

The days were long as jet-lag set in, Memorial Day weekend was in full throttle and thousands of emotions swept over me like a storm of wildfire. I didn't know how to think, act, feel... be. I just knew that I was in a new chapter of my life while still re-reading chapters of my past. Unhappy thoughts and sorrow rushed over me. Dreams of the past haunted me. I had opened a can of worms coming back to the life I had once known, that was no longer the same.

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
― John Steinbeck

My lights went out when I came home and I'm still fighting to turn them all back on. I don't know how long it will take or how long I will have to fight, but I'll never stop. 

It's my family and friends that make me smile, the memories that I will never forget that push me to make new ones, and knowing that the world has so much to offer that drives me to do my best. I am on just one small branch of my Tree of Life. No matter how much doubt I feel today, I control how I will feel tomorrow... and I am on a mission to make the best out of life!