I didn’t cry, so it didn’t happen
A reflection
It’s 9 am on a Monday, and there is already a line of 15 people, each itching to be anywhere else, outside of the Department of Motor Vehicles in Bozeman, Montana. The line is full of test-takers, license renewers, information updaters. Bearded men in trucker hats and overalls with tobacco stained teeth. Vaguely bohemian, backpack-wearing women with silk breeches, Chacos, and bead-adorned hair. Students with side-slung bags, aviators, and headphones. A pair of gossiping old women. Whining toddlers. Shiny shoes and tucked-in polos. Snapbacks and crop-tops. Every one of them waiting behind the facade of hope for a quick visit.
Without Montanan small town emphasis on “neighborly values,” any single line occupant would be lucky to receive as much as a terse nod from another. Whatever intentional and resolute aloofness an individual might bring into such a situation is made moot by the business — indeed, the very insipid nature of the institution— at hand; small talk is an inadequate tool for fending off the bleak hours, but it’s better than being left alone with your own thoughts.
It’s here that I sit, scratching my chin-rug and trying to fend off flimsy dad jokes, jet lag, and my own raging nostalgia.
Friday night, Scotland:
A cadre of friends from across the world, our numbers bent but not broken by early departures, drinks in hand, reminiscing about a semester’s worth of adventure and whimsy and questionable decisions.
Monday morning, Montana:
A middle-aged woman snaps her gum, fending off a full-bodied assault by two toddlers while her youngest cries plaintively from the stroller. A beoveralled good old boy disinterestedly scratches his unmentionables. The guy in the corner hasn’t taken his sunglasses off since we entered.
How did I get here?
Flashback five months and some change: an anxious, dry-mouthed Christian sits in the airport, telling anyone who will listen that he’s going to Scotland to study for a semester. 19 hours pass in a dizzying blur of plane cabins, airports and brief slivers of countryside and foreign languages. Then: fresh Scottish air. Old friends. New friends. Thick accents and cars on the other side of the road. Plenty of rain. Beer in corner pubs, fish and chips, and a thin, creaky dormitory bed. This is home for six months, whoopee, here we go.
Now I’m blinking, sitting in a stiff-backed chair with a clipboard on my lap, scratching my hand absentmindedly while staring at the carpet. Hoping to escape while there’s still daylight.
I was always the kid who cried on the last day of summer camp. The terrible penchant of being overtaken by throat-clenching sentimentality at the conclusion of any semi-meaningful experience strips me of basic functionality for several days at a time. I dreaded my exodus at the conclusion of this past fall semester; on the tail of a bittersweet breakup and leaving my host of soon-to-be graduating senior friends, studying abroad was the metaphorical monster at which I brandished my pitchfork. About halfway through my study abroad experience, I began to expect a similar response upon taking my leave of the United Kingdom.
The ineffable normality of the DMV — the infuriating vapidness with which the clerk instructs me to look at the smiley face below the camera as she takes my ID photo — scares me straight through. It’s as if I had pressed the pause button from my plane seat, preserving Bozeman in a state of near-motionlessness; with the exception of new construction projects, nothing else moves or changes. My life is as I had left it: decidedly vanilla, not without its charms and memory-worthy moments, but inevitably unsatisfying. Prosaic. Uninspired. Work every day, video games at night, hikes on the weekends. Not bad. But not different.
The lack of that familiar gripping nostalgia, my particular brand of over-attachment, means that Glasgow and everything that accompanied it is as good as fiction. Where was my longing for another round of drinks in our favorite pub, eye-rolling puns, and cobblestone streets? Have I been left unaffected by my tenure abroad? Truly, without wistfulness-induced-nausea, I cannot be certain that anything in the past half-year actually happened.
Even my music isn’t working; proven wet-eye inducers give way to snappy indie-pop jams without so much as a wayward thought towards the rolling greens of Scotland. Clearly, studying abroad has had little impact on my life.
The DMV is not a good metaphor for studying abroad. The DMV is a better analogy for bad comedy, the kind of event people go to because there is literally nothing else to do. You accompany strangers into a cramped, sweaty room for an extended period of time, listen to too many bad jokes and life stories, and leave forty dollars poorer. This unfortunately necessary mainstay of adult life is better viewed in contrast to something else; with comparison comes clarity. It’s easier to see the leaves being pushed off the tree than it is to see the wind. Likewise, the effects of my time abroad are more apparent in light of how I find myself acting now that I’ve come home.
I’m more critical, less tolerant of casual irreverence, sexism, and poorly-supported opinions; I don’t rush to push out of the way those that I can’t understand because they speak in broken English or with a heavy accent. I’m convinced that America is not the greatest nation in the world, and overzealous nationalism is much more apparent to me in daily life. I listen equally as much as I prod. And, apparently, I let my friends and experiences from a time and place leave that time and place. I think I’m starting to look for the possibilities inherent in beginnings instead of fervently wishing against any and all change.
I’m sitting here, individual toes tired from their incessant, bored tapping, neck sore from air travel, eyelids drooping as I wait my turn for the clerk to approve my passage back into vehicular society — and I’m positive I’m not the same person who sat waiting to board a plane six months ago. So my heart doesn’t hurt. But that doesn’t invalidate anything that’s happened since January. If anything, it makes me cherish the memories I made and the relationships formed even more. In life, very rarely is it ever a “farewell,” but instead a “see you soon.” I’ll go back someday.
Unfortunately, the same is probably true of the DMV.
