Two-hundred-and-thirty-five more days. That's how much longer my tape measure says I'm still staying in the States. The yellow light surrounding me highlights the dust particles in my room while I'm staring at the white tape measure hanging down my wall. It used to touch the ground. Now it's at the height of my bed. Two-hundred-and-thirty-five more long days. It used to be three-hundred-and-seventy-eight. That means I already slept one-hundred-and-forty-three lonely days in this old, creaky bed which has seen more people sleep in it then I have friends here. That's more than a third. To be exact, it is the same amount of days I've already gotten through and then another ninty-two.
One-hundred-and-thirty-six days ago is when I began counting the days.
I had been excited to do an exchange year in the US. Everyone thought I was so brave. I had been curious. I had been thrilled at the prospect of an exchange year in Arizona on a full scholarship for my Undergraduate Medicine course. My host family was amazing. They were kind, included me and stuck to our two nights per week babysitting arrangement for free boarding.
When Julie, the probably best friend a girl could wish for, gave me the measuring tape together with the most sentimental friendship farewell card and a good luck charm necklace, I didn't think I would use it. Julie had the same tape measure adorning her bedroom back in Luxembourg, initially cut off at the three-hundred-and-seventy-eight cm mark. I had refused to hang it up. I would have a good time, the time of my life. I had expected a bit of a rough first week, maybe two. But then I would make lots of new friends, parties, adventures. Little did I know that after one-hundred-and-forty-three days I still only had one real friend.
Lianna is from Belgium. So we are practically neighbors. That must have attracted us. She also stayed with a host family. If we didn't go out to Borders for a late night hot chocolate, we'd be on the phone for hours. Lianna has become a good friend, but when our courses clash, I feel lost on campus and lost in my own little universe. And that's when I retrieve to dreaming of the life I chose to leave behind.
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Back home:
Sitting on the carpet in front of my bed, I stare out the ground floor window, fixing my gaze on the vertical lines of a tree trunk. We used to go out every weekend. Lino or Alex would usually drive. They had their own cars. Sometimes, when they got their parents car, Toni or Bridge drove. My parents only have one car. That made it a bit more difficult. And I hated driving at night, so I preferred to put in for patrol and offer my friends a place to crash if parties were nearby. After all, my parents lived quite central.
I smiled when I thought back of that time last summer when we all went to the lake and at night, when noone else was around, we built a slide from plastic bags down a small hill straight into the water. That was the first time I had seen Toni since Jee told me that he had a crush on me. I had never noticed and waved it all off, but that night, his stares in my direction were hard to overlook. When Sabrina mocked me about it, I had played it all down again. There was no way I would jeopardize the friendship of our group by ever starting something with one of my friends, or hurting their feelings. If the issue wasn't addressed, it wasn't there. And it had worked for long enough.
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Falling Walls (III)
RomanceLisa and Tom have found their way together. They are looking at the future, Tom convincing Lisa that his past is a closed chapter. But when Lisa picks up a book with a story all too similar to Tom's, she can't leave the past alone, stirring up all t...
