catching my breath

Hello, angels! Not that you’ve noticed, but it has been just about a month since I last wrote you. Good grief!

It’s Sunday, April 17th as I am writing this, and I am sitting on a bench in Waterfront Park in Cardiff, Wales. It’s a breezy 66 degrees Fahrenheit, and the sun is just barely poking through a layer of gauzy, translucent clouds. On my way over to this bench, I walked through a lovely little local market and purchased a delightful-looking, artisan brownie in the flavor of Nutella hazelnut. I know. Delish. It is taking quite literally everything in me to not shove the whole thing in my face right now.

My two-week-long spring break commenced on Thursday which means once I return, I will have one week of classes, final exams the following week, and then I head back home to the States. Holy cow! I got to spend the past couple days in Alicante, getting free meals—I mean spending quality time with my mom and her two friends from college. But truly, it was such a comfort and joy to see my sweet mamma in the city I’ve been living in for the past three months and of course, getting to explore the food scene that I cannot afford to splurge on was quite the treat as well.

These last four weeks have been so full that I am unsure of where to begin to catch you up. But I think what I need most right now is to do less explaining (perhaps I’ll save that for another time), and more catching my breath. Virtually the entire time I’ve been in Europe, I have spent half my week in Alicante, attending class and cramming in all my assignments before I spend the other half of my week traveling to wherever the cheap flights lead. You can imagine this makes grocery shopping a bit tricky…

I feel like there is all this talk around studying abroad like it is some sort of personal great awakening, some incredible journey of finding oneself. Hah. I’m critical of those ideas in and of themselves but particularly in the case of this sort of experience. Do I feel like I have grown in various ways? For sure. Do I feel like I have learned something? I’d say I’ve learned a lot. Have I met really cool people and cultivated meaningful relationships? I’d say so. Could I have done my trip differently and not traveled every weekend? Coulda, shoulda, woulda. And who knows the next time I’ll be able to travel to Europe again?

To put a long story short, I am grateful for this experience and have enjoyed a lot of it, but I am truly a tired, homesick queen. I miss my people. I miss my books. I miss hot showers and having access to a dryer. I forgot what other clothes I own. I would also appreciate ready access to cold brew coffee and the occasional Chick-fil-a breakfast. Having a steady income is also nice. I am so very grateful for all the travel I have been so fortunate to be able to do and for the privilege of being able to study abroad in general—I understand it is a remarkable privilege—but in this moment, as I reflect on how I am doing, and how I have been, I feel so disconnected from myself.

I was uprooted from the people and place that I love and stuck in this temporary pot, like those dinky terra cotta ones from Walmart, with limited resources to survive for 4 months. I’ve gotten to decorate the outside of my pot with merits of travel, just like I remember decorating one of those same little terra cotta ones in preschool arts & crafts. But the foam stickers and Elmer’s glue and sequins and glitter don’t do anything for the sustenance of the plant. They’re fun and can add superficial value, but they sure ain’t contributing to photosynthesis.

All my traveling has sort of felt like decorations on a pot. Europe is magical and full of beauty and wonder and mystery, but I guess, in efforts to just see and do the Europe thing, I feel like I’ve forfeited a piece of myself? Like, have y’all seen Cate? I can’t find her! She’s lost somewhere between two scoops of Stracciatella gelato and a tear-stained copy of Mary Oliver’s Devotions.

While I certainly could have done a better job at being more intentional in my care of my whole self while abroad, I think this environment has only been conducive for me to not to have done exactly so, and my circumstances created the perfect storm for me to feel this way. Last semester was the first semester since Clemson had in-person classes and events since my first semester there. It finally felt like I was in college again after months, years even, of being tethered to my Zoom camera. At last, I felt as though I had sturdy roots in Clemson, and it felt like home. And just when things started to fall into place, I flew across the Atlantic Ocean for 4 months. What now?

A darling friend of mine, Jewels, shared some lovely words on Holy Week last week that feel so timely:

I guess what I’m trying to say and work through in my own brain is that Easter only exists as a result of 6 other days full of confusion, joy, loss, every emotion under the sun. It isn’t that our ultimate reality isn’t Easter in some sort of deep way, because it is. Love did win and death was defeated, forever. But, I think that the fact that Easter is our ultimate reality frees us up to experience other days of Holy Week, even if those other days of loss, hope, anxiety, confusion, or joy seem to last years.

There is no Easter Sunday without being left in the garden, without the crucifixion, without dinner with the people you trust the most, without asking, as Jesus did, “if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Similarly, I often want to get out of the human experience and try to skip difficult, important parts of my life. But without them, there’s no resurrection, no Easter day. It’s not that we don’t have free will to skip all of it, we do, but we’ll just miss out on the human experience. And if we’re not here to be as human as we can possible be, then what are we doing? Some years feel like Easter. Other’s feel like getting left in the garden alone because your friends that were supposed to be there with you fell asleep. This is not only okay, but it is the only way that we are able to be truly born again.

I am no believer in everything happens for a reason, but I do think there is something to be learned in everything, no matter how big or small or simple or complicated.

I did not need to move across the ocean to learn how to be independent. I’ve been pulling myself up by my bootstraps since I was like 7. I didn’t need to live in Europe for four months to discover myself. I do that much better when I’m not uprooted from my sustentative environment, actually (and that’s not something you can just re-create in less than four months in a foreign country with new people, anyhow).

In fact, what I think I am learning for myself is quite the opposite from all the things I’ve heard about studying abroad. I’m learning that I actually really love and need familiarity and comfort, and it’s in those spaces, occupied by the people who have earned the space for my vulnerability, where I feel most seen and known and loved and free to be my truest, most whole and free self.

I’m learning that without the difficult days, perhaps months, there is no resurrection, no Easter. I can lean into whatever feelings or emotions I am experiencing right now because they, too, are a part of being born again. And gosh, beyond that, I am learning to trust. To trust this Easter story that wrongs will be made right, that every sad thing will ultimately come untrue, and like my sweet friend Cameron shared with me, the worst thing never has the final word. Sometimes it feels silly to believe this in the wake of my lowest of lows, but that’s exactly the miraculous, paradoxical nature of it all; on the third day He rose again from the dead.

I am understanding the necessity of active trust coupled with bravery—the bravery of communicating how I’m feeling on the inside—and recognizing that while hardship and every emotion under the sun are the precursors to the resurrection, no one’s asking me to do it alone, either. And I am learning to discern between when things are just hard, and when things are made unnecessarily harder because there is healing to be done.

I’ve been resistant to admit the truth that I am not invincible and that I can’t go through life without asking for help since well… forever. And if it took shipping me across the ocean for a semester for me to truly realize this, then so be it.

Now I give you Mary Oliver’s “Gethsemane”:

The grass never sleeps. Or the roses. Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning. Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept. The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet, and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body, and heaven knows if it ever sleeps. Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move, maybe the lake far away, where once he walked as on a blue pavement, lay still and waited, wild awake. Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not keep that vigil, how they must have wept, so utterly human, knowing this too must be a part of the story.

This must be a part of the story of becoming, of resurrection. And we’re in it together! Oh, what a comfort.

Talk soon.

All my love,

Cate