Will and I are home. Sort of.

We’re in Kansas City until Monday, then Chicago for New Year’s, and we finally move back into our permanent residence in New York City on January 5th, 2015. Even though we’re not quite done yet, it feels like I’ve been able to release half a breath I didn’t realize I was holding so tightly. Of course with Christmas Day festivities I felt out of breath all over again. I loved every minute of it. This holiday season is going to be and already has been a blast.

Though being back has been wonderful and we were ready for our adventures to be put to rest, I found myself dragging my feet about leaving. No doubt that some of it was due to the actual packing process. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to find that I procrastinated as much as humanly possible and was still in fact, putting things into suitcase when the packers came to deal with everything that we weren’t taking with us on the road. It took the company only four hours to pack up everything we had brought with us and accumulated over the year. I was grateful that it was someone else packing our stuff instead of me, but having eleven people in my apartment, touching my things, when I didn’t speak enough of their language to communicate was a deeply uncomfortable situation. Living in a country where I wasn’t able to talk and be understood was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Our apartment had become my safe zone. I didn’t have to pidgin my way through conversation or emphatically gesture to be understood there. Even though it was my last day there, having that taken away, and in fact, having that be part of how we left was difficult. But, it had to be done. After they finished putting our things in boxes we went to our last dinner at my favorite yakiniku place (well, the only place I knew of…) a short train ride away. We made one last S’MORE in our awkwardly empty kitchen, shut off the breakers, and then I was in a car to a bus to a plane to Kansas City. Kansai, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Kansas City. Seventeen thousand, eight hundred and eighty-seven miles down, one thousand four hundred and forty-six miles to go.

I’m finding myself relaxed in a way that I had forgotten that I could be. My trips home to see friends and family were always refreshing but they were always also exhausting. While shy about meeting new people, I find myself sliding into depression without a certain amount of socialization that couldn’t be had in Japan. Most people combat this by hanging out with friends, usually so do I, but last year hanging out had a slightly longer commute. With a bit of jet lag. And the gas prices were just a little steeper. Now that I’m back, I’ve already started planning dinner parties and outings with friends and it’s fun in ways that it never was before. I’ve always loved getting friends together but never been crazy about the logistics. Now the logistics feel like a piece of cake.

The downside to being ‘almost’ back is dealing with the fallout from the false feeling of home. I’m staying with my best friend so it’s just enough home for me to relax, but just enough off for me to feel like I have to re-find my place in life. I don’t, or maybe I do, but I’m not actually home yet so I don’t know.

My life in New York City will be more than a little different this time around. I’m moving back with the knowledge that we’ll be there for the foreseeable future. I’m going back to school and I’ll have time to pick up hobbies and meet more friends. It’s easy to meet new friends while seeing the world, but it’s not so easy to maintain that friendship by actually hang out with them when your life is going 100mph. For the first time since college, I’ll be living somewhere without knowing when I’ll be leaving. We have an 18 month lease, but unless we find our neighborhood unbearable, we’ll probably extend it. New York is going to be home for a good long while.

I can’t wait to be home.