New waters in 2016: The Year of New Beginnings

I am having a hard time finding words, and maybe that is OK. Maybe I’m not supposed to know what to write before I start. Maybe it will come as it will, all on its own.

It’s been a good few weeks. My sister came to visit for the last two. We spent the first week here, and we went to Curacao and Aruba the next. Soft sand, water so intoxicatingly blue, the sun … Aruba especially is a dream. Just as you’d imagine.

I am glad she came to visit. I feel relaxed. I feel calm in her presence. I feel calm in her logic, the way she drifts through life calmly, takes it on as it comes and doesn’t fuss much or lose herself in bouts of anxiety. I love how she doesn’t plan, and she just follows her tastes, moods, and desires. I see my sister as someone who is in touch with herself, moment to moment. Because I am highly sensitive, I pick up on my surroundings … after movies, I often feel like the characters. After books the same. After visits with my sister, the same. Her calm rubs off on me. Or it could be the special connection we have … if we were in the same city, we would be inseparable. I love her so much. I am smiling typing this because it’s incredible to have a sister you love, and I don’t know that I have loved anyone as deeply and unconditionally as I do this sister. With my older sister we’ve never been as close. We are different; she is not too enlightened, less calm, more insecure, full of judgments, and I get bored quickly around her. She has some flaws that are turnoffs for me – selfishness, self-indulgence, laziness, a mean streak. But my younger sister … she inspires me. It’s a gift to be around her, to know her, to love her.

I miss her so much when she is away. Like I miss many things about where I’m from. Sometimes I think that in my 20 years in the States, I have not acculturated at all. I still see myself as mostly an outsider, a visitor. It’s strange. I wonder why some acculturate faster than others, and some just hold on to their countries and cultures of origin.

I start school next week. I’m excited at times, terrified at others. I had a moment of panic when my sister was here. I met her after work at the park, and I just started crying. She blinked, looking at me. She was in tender disbelief. She told me she knows I will do well, that it is nothing I can’t handle, that I’ll see that soon. I smile as I remember those moments. I love her because she accepts me as I am. She didn’t and never does make me feel like I’m a worse person for having many feelings, for panicking about imaginary future challenges, for being anxious, for ever being scared, for crying. Not that I do these things all the time, but when I do, she accepts me and these feelings as they are. Older sis has often made me feel like I’m weak at moments like that. In fact, she’s looked for the opportunities so she could put me down and assert herself as superior. Now I know it’s her own insecurity. But when I was younger I didn’t. I started believing it. With younger sis, she accepts things and people as they are. That’s one of the things I love most about her. Acceptance. She meets people where they are – doesn’t nitpick their qualities or judge them for strengths and flaws they possess. She lives lightly, drifting through life, always in the moment. I love her so much …

So school. Will I finish this degree? Who knows. I feel like things are coming to a head. It’s wonderful that my life is moving forward as it is in the States, but the truth I never say is that I feel an inward call to be back closer to “home.” A strange word. Yet, what is home for me? It’s always been mobile. I can’t imagine life in Greece again. And I can’t imagine life forever here either – I often find myself struggling against that idea. So I give up the struggle. I let it be. As I start this new chapter, we will see which drive wins out in the end, the intellectual or the familial. Individualism or collectivism. It will play out on its own. Maybe these things will intermix in ways I cannot imagine right now. Time only will tell. No point in worrying. I will do my best to hear the call and answer it as I tread new waters in the coming weeks, months, years …

love,
me