winter nostos

So I remember all of those whose death

Is necessary condition of the season's setting forth,

Who sorry in this time look only back

To Christmas intimacy, a winter dialogue

Fading in silence, leaving them in tears.

W.H. Auden "It was Easter as I walked in the public gardens"

I find it hard to believe that I'm getting a chance to travel to Paris just to write. I feel I have conflicted feelings about my trip. At once I find myself to be extremely excited, which is the natural emotion one has when planning a trip abroad. Other times I am actually saddened at the prospect of leaving, even for a short span of time. The reason I never strayed far from home was because of my grandmother and now that she's gone I'm at liberty to make that full transition into adulthood that I could never reach in her presence. I'm not trying to say she held me back because if anything I feel as though she's held me up. In those last few years when I didn't know how long I'd have her, the future, to me, seemed nonexistent. This reality, these new conditions, I face now is my future. It's appropriate to say that I've lost a little bit of myself with her passing. I need to figure out who I am without her, as well as who I am because of her.