"I know that we all have to go our own ways, but hey, I still miss you."

Last semester, through literature and experience, I think I came pretty close to an answering my question in a way my heart understands.
Change is inevitable during each stage of life, as noticeable as physical growth or geographic displacement and as subtle as the feelings I have no words for. Coming home sets in action a change that is different from day to day transformations or the sudden difference that leaving causes; coming home requires reconciliation of past with present. And the only way to cope with this change is by embracing it. Fighting change and fighting only for the past, whether the past I had before I left or the past I had during the adventure, leads to painful reminders of what has been left behind. But forgetting the impact of past journeys negates their value and is emotionally impossible.

The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama told me how to embrace change. The idea of a clean slate was something brought up again and again during my semester at HMI. In January we were told to give others and ourselves a chance to be something different than we were at home and to give the semester a slate free from expectations and a chance to just be RMS XXVI, wholly ours, unique from the 25 before us. In May we were told to give home the same clean slate; rid our friends, our families, our schools from the burden of expectations and comparisons. That was much harder said than done, and I must have missed the part when giving ourselves another clean slate while going home was mentioned, because I certainly have struggled with letting myself be free to move into a new life with it's changes, subtle and not, from my life at HMI as well as before it. But embracing change means giving myself a clean slate to transform. My essay I wrote over The Samurai's Garden dealt with Tsukiyama's use of a water motif to represent the necessity of change and the growth that comes from it. But more importantly The Samurai's Garden and the essay I wrote about it mirrored the excitement and pain of moving on, of saying good bye, of giving clean slates but not forgetting the wonderful past that has lead to now.

So, I sit here now wondering if I'm ready to move on to a new question. Is returning home still something that is weighing heavily on my heart? On Thursday, one year will have passed since I left on my semester adventure, and next Monday will mark 8 months since returning and it feels a little ridiculous that it's taken twice as long as my semester to stop "returning" and be ready to just get to the living.
Though part of me is scared to move forward, clutching to the past as not to forget a thing, I know I need the hope of today and the hope of the future to fill the lonely nights when once-tangible things fade to what seems like only ghosts and dreams.

title from "Angel Rays" by Trevor Hall