FIELD NOTE 2.17 – Now I become myself.

I’m beginning to love it here. I realized this as I stood shivering for the tram to come and take me from the fac to my dorm at 14h00 this afternoon. My classes are overwhelming me, I haven’t managed to make a single French friend, and I have absolutely idea no idea where my life is headed. And yet even with all of that, I still managed to feel peaceful standing there with my hands shoved as deep in my pockets as they would go.

I was told yesterday that I would never learn French in a classroom, that I would need to get out and practice. This is true. But I’m beginning to suspect the real reason that I’m here right now isn’t actually to learn French.

That’s just an added perk.

No, I’m beginning to feel that my being here is more personal than anything else. Every day is a ritual of class followed immediately by returning to my room to look up terms and verbs I didn’t know in class (and is normally quite lengthy). Living like this has meant I’ve had to spend quite some time alone, something that used to bother me a lot.

But here I’ve come to like being alone every day. It’s given me time to actually get to know myself, as silly as that sounds. Normally I hustle through each day, making lists of what needs to be done, what needs to be bought, what needs to be thought of. So many lists that my life seems to become a list in itself. Life isn’t like that here. Sure, I have my lists but they don’t seem nearly as imperative to complete as they did in Richmond.

I feel like I’m beginning to breathe again. I’m also beginning to see there are things about myself that I’ve completely overlooked and that I’m smarter, more amazing and (dare I say it?) more beautiful that I ever realized.

Knowing this, everything else seems secondary. The French, the friends will come in time. I am completely happy for the moment living completely alone, an exile in myself. Maybe this is what I need at this point in my life.

I finally understand the words of May Sarton’s “Now I Become Myself” when she wrote:

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)

Is this what is happening?

That sounds a lot like destiny, a term that has always worried me. I don't want to be fated to anything, I want to choose. I think that's what it is more than anything - I am choosing to finally be myself, I am becoming myself.