The reality is.

The reality is that I will be on a plane in a little over 48 hours. By the end of those 48 hours, whether I like it or not, I will have: packed my bags, paid off my parking ticket, danced at the reception of my oldest cousin's wedding, dyed my hair, eaten my last brownie, and hugged and kissed and cried my way through one too many goodbyes. The reality is that I'm about to get on a plane completely alone for the first time in my life, cut myself loose from the comfortably worn and warm threads of summer, and step into a new season. I like to attempt to document transition in order to catch hold of that elusive devil called change. If I could only write down my every thought and fear now, then those thoughts and fears might be pieced together to form a tangible psyche, a reflection of the slippery person who I am today and who I will no longer be 6 months from today. Who's to say when change really happens anyhow? Who's able to pinpoint the actual moments in which we become different people, slowly altered by conversations spoken and overheard, by scenes played out in dining rooms and subway trains? Like the slow physical changes that govern our bodies (weight loss/gain, hair and nail growth, etc), the changes that shape our development as people can be observed but never fully tracked, day by day.

So, in a perhaps futile attempt to document the transition from "Heather in the Philly burbs" to "Heather in Mexico City," I'll record some of what's going through my head just a few days before leaving the country:

1). I am aging out of control! I just turned 23, and it occurs to me that I will be spending my entire 23rd year in Mexico. When I get back to the States, I will be 24. Holy crap. Why does that seem so OLD? I know, I know, you don't have to tell me. I am ridiculous. It's just that I have this feeling that my twenties are slipping through my fingers faster than sand in an hourglass during a round of Boggle. Didn't I just mourn the end of my childhood? Didn't I just become an adult and start assuming agency in my own life? Didn't people just start calling me "ma'am" and treating me as a self-governing person with respectable needs and wants and with the sufficient education to attain those needs and wants? Now you're telling me that I'm at the age when people are beginning to know what they want to do with their lives, marry, and have kids? Yikes. Give me a year to get used to the idea of life without built-in structure (school, family roles, etc). Atleast in Mexico I'll come as close to stepping into a virtual time machine as is possible in this world as we know it. For some reason, in Mexico, I lose five years. I have been told on several occassions that I do not look a day over 18.

2). Confession: I have a fear of being deeply inadequate. I think that as I imagine ahead to my life at the Casa with both excited and anxious anticipation, this is the nagging root of my worry. Heather, what are you doing? Do you even speak Spanish? Are you going to be okay with being as thoroughly underwhelming as you are? I had a dream that I was already in Mexico and that my fellow volunteers were discussing book after book and that I had not heard of a single one of them. All I want to do is to learn from the amazing community of people that congregates at the Casa, but will I even be able to keep my head above water in conversations with this group of activists, humanitarians, and hippies?

Whew. Now that I have some of my neuroses down in front of me, I think that I can get a good night's sleep.