Ungrateful

I may be going to Thailand, and China.

I have wanted to go to Asia for a long, long time.

And yet, I am not happy.

Because I am a wretched ingrate, that’s why.

It looks like I am going to be sent on a trip for work (and I’ve never been sent anywhere exotic before) for about a week or so in March.

Ordinarily, this would be pretty exciting. It will be mostly a trip of the going-to-a-meeting-and-talking-to-scientists-and-writing-about-it variety, rather than going-into-the-field-and-talking-to-farmers, and with all the stress of worrying about doing a good enough job, and guilt about my carbon footprint, but, nevertheless it will be new place and new sights and all the joys of going somewhere.

But, I will be away for:
- the Friday I was planning to have a party and go out dancing to celebrate my birthday.
- my birthday itself.
- the holiday days we get for Easter, and perhaps Easter itself, and all the celebrations and strangeness and possibilities of spending time with friends that go with Semana Santa in Mexico.

In other words, pretty much the last celebratory things before my contract finishes (at the end of March).

And it’s a week, at least a week, of not being in Mexico, when I only have seven or eight weeks left.

Leaving Mexico is on my mind all the time now, a constant miserable tension. But when I actively think about it it’s much worse. Every bit of me feels like it’s turned to dust, and my heart aches, and I’m sharply unhappy and fearful with the anticipation of it. Which, I’m quite aware, is not the ideal way to spend my last weeks here, and does not make me the most awesome company ever.

I’ll not be gone forever. I will come back – telling myself this makes it bearable. But, I’ll never live here again. I have to relinquish all the scraps of belonging I’ve slowly managed to claw to myself – a few friends to do things with, colleagues who invite me to the occasional birthday party or baby shower, a few stallholders who know me and greet me with a familiar smile, the dozens of daily smiles and how-are-yous and little chats with colleagues, the notoriety I have somehow acquired as organizer of volleyball sessions and Friday after-work parties, the routines. There are a few people I’ll keep in touch with, probably, but…

When I come back it will be as a visitor. This hurts more than I realized it would.

I sometimes think that most of the things I do, the decisions I make, are the emotional equivalent of sitting down and sticking pins in my eyes.