next!

I've been home in Madison for a little over 10 days. I'm going a little crazy. I need my next adventure to start NOW, but I'm trying to be happy in the moment...

Sitting at home now, and finally with nobody around asking me things and distracting me, I'm trying to finish my application before it's due in five hours. I've wanted to apply for this for a year, and the application is fairly easy to write, mostly because I've thought about this stuff a lot... the challenge is how to sort through all my ideas to write coherent answers.

Sipping iced green tea that has been waiting for me in the fridge. Wishing it was raining like it did yesterday. Contemplating making my favorite pasta that I haven't had in what feels like ages for lunch.

I've realized that I come "home" to Madison to remember that it's really not my home anymore. Although I'm happy to not be where I was a year ago, I miss how I felt in my old life in Madison almost as much as I'm missing Doha... and I already have a kind of preemptive nostalgia for London, interestingly enough...

Driving to Iowa to pick up some of my sister's college stuff yesterday, a song came on that I listened to all the time in Doha and I saw myself in my mind, driving on the dusty roads at dusk, the Corniche on my right, desert on my left... the memory floated away easily when I turned my head and saw the little red farmhouses perched on the rolling hills full of corn and verdant trees that are characteristically Wisconsin.

On that drive, I also finally understood that for the first time in four years or so, I could actually stay in the same place for three years or more if I wanted to... and my plans seem to be arranging themselves that way. I'm trying really hard to make myself let go of my ridiculous expectations of my fabulous life in London. But at the same time, I'm determined to make this an amazing year, if not my best year yet. For now, I am pretty content with just thinking short-term and continuing to look forward to being crazy busy and working really, really hard all the time...

numb

I leave for the airport in half an hour. There are no more words.

living

My whole life, especially in high school and in college, I always yearned to be done, to graduate, to live my life, to have the opportunity to go on and do what I always dreamed of doing without having youth or school or hoops to jump through in my way.

Yesterday, for the first time, I realized that I am actually - right this second - living my life.

I realized that I am becoming the person I've wanted to be and that everything I do in every moment helps me to get one step closer. So although my life in Doha is fading into the past, I have never been happier with my present. My future is not as uncertain as it used to be, yet it is still hidden and unknown. And I've never been more optimistic about simply not knowing than I am now.

In the past eleven months, I've taken over 32 flights. I've visited six new countries and been to two international conferences. I've pushed myself past what seemed to be my limits and bounced back. I've been depressed and elated, sometimes at the same moment. I've become less judgemental and more open. I have felt the most invincible and the most vulnerable I have ever felt in my life. I have fallen so deeply in love with a world that the effortless misunderstandings and incorrect labels shouted by others make my heart hurt.

I developed a life for myself in Qatar, one of the most conservative countries in the world and in AIESEC. I have a home, a sort-of family, friends, people I can rely on, places I know and love and a life that is completely separate from everything I have ever known before. [And it is gratifying to know that the construction of this life was done completely and solely by me... this year, I was wholly responsible for my own destiny.]

In a few days, I won't feel like I achieved something after I arrive somewhere without getting into a car accident. I won't get to interact with people from three or more continents daily, constantly trying to guess where they're from and understand their accents. I won't get to wander around the stone pathways in the old souq and smell the spices wafting through the air or go to Villagio and watch the kiddies riding in the gondolas on the canal while eating my 1 QR McDonald's ice cream and toting my shopping bags. In a few days, I will have more than four places to choose from when I want to go out at night. I won't be able to have hommos that's nearly as good as it is at Layiali or shish tawouk like they make at Turkey Central or shawarma that tastes and smells like heaven or Umm Ali that makes me melt with its sweet, warm deliciousness. The sun won't beat down on me, burning my skin when I step outside and I may be able to bare my shoulders in public without glares and stares. I won't be able to have a spontaneous heart-to-heart over shisha and mint tea on the waterfront, decide to go duning for the day or laugh when yet another website I want to visit is blocked. In a few days, words that have become a significant part of my vocabulary won't be understood by those around me.

In four days, all this will become my past.

Leaving Madison one year ago was bittersweet, and marked the transition from student to real life. Leaving Doha now is... relieving, yet deeply saddening. I feel that I'm leaving part of myself behind in the Middle East as I evolve forward...

deep breaths

Fourteen days. I can't even think those two words without breaking down. I am panicking and deeply sad at the same time. I want to scream through cascading tears and grab anything within my arms' reach and never let go, like a three-year-old whose parents are leaving for the weekend. I feel more homeless, lost and alone with every day that passes. Ironically, I'm much more at home in the world, loved and "found" than I was a year ago.

But a conversation with mom never ceases to ease and refocus my mind, while reminding me how fortunate I am to have these challenges in my life. I am proud to be slowly gaining the strength that I have always known her to have.

the team: a photoshoot