Almost the end

I'm about to leave and my life in Jordan is about to become a series of memories.  No longer a nuanced life of ups and downs, but snapshots remembered and retold to people only half listening.

I am ready to move on to Life After Jordan, but I am not ready to leave.

Because my Arabic teacher taught us how to make maqloobeh, and I spent an hour chopping parsley in the kitchen and when will I ever have that much time to spend cutting vegetables into infinitesimally small pieces ever again?

Because I speak this horrible made up language of Arabic and English (and Spanish sometimes when no one can remember the word in Arabic) and at home I will only get exasperated sighs and eye rolls for my enthusiasm about the word mnamanmat.

Because where will I ever find a roommate who wants to talk about Syrian refugees or the elections in Egypt as much as mine do?

My stomach ties itself into knots that I blame on heat and too much falafel but I think have to do with coming home.  A year is a longlonglong time to be gone.  Can you be a million things at once?  Because I am and I have no words to encompass all of it.

I am leaving more broken and more whole than when I left.  I am leaving with a renewed sense of purpose and a better understanding of just how lost I am.

I am a walking contradiction and at any given moment I could write a novel with the thoughts racing around my head.

I have asked too many questions in the past year, and I am not quite ready to resign myself to the lack of answers and return to my far away mountainous winter wonderland.

But it's almost the end.  And again, I'm leaving a place that became a home in such a short amount of time with a small amount of luggage and a perspective on the world that's been irrevocably changed.