Dosta.

So, this is awkward.

I meant to write this before I left Serbia, but you know how it goes when you decide to end an assignment early and have only two weeks to say goodbye to your friends and pack all your belongings into two 23 kilo bags (and only ONE carry on, thanks a lot, Austrian air…). There wasn’t time to write it there, so I’ll explain now.

So, yes, I’m leaving early. Have left, actually. It isn’t that anything specific happened (other than, you know, my father dying), or that things were really so bad, or that I couldn’t deal with life in Belgrade. Belgrade is an incredible city full of beauty and passion and depth and surprises, my job was amazing, and I was starting to make some genuine friendships. I adored the other service workers with MCC in the region, and I was FINALLY becoming conversational in Serbian. So, why bail?

Good question. To be honest, I was really cold. The weekend I made the decision was the coldest we had had this winter and the heat in my apartment wasn’t working. Of course, it is more than that, but in the interest of full disclosure, you need to know that fear of frostbite was a factor in the decision. Of course, there is more than that, too.

After the funeral, when I decided to come back to Serbia, lots of people told me they were proud of me. Lots of people told me my dad would be proud of me. People told me I was being brave and selfless, but here’s the secret: I am much more scared of going home than I was of going back to Serbia. I think, on some level, being in Serbia the past few months protected me from certain parts of the grieving process. There was so much to do and see and think about I didn’t have TIME to fall apart. In some ways, I was hiding in the Balkans… hiding from my grief, from my past, and from my family.

Now I’m going home, because it’s time. I have always wanted to travel, to see what there is to see, to forge a new path, to be on my own, and I’ve been lucky to be able to do a decent amount of that through international travel the past few years. It took the death of a parent, but now I think I am starting to see the value of having both wings AND roots, the value of family, the value of home. It sounds cliché and naive, I know, but I do think part of the reason I wanted to live abroad was to, in some sense, “find myself”. I did a lot of things the past few months… I lived alone for the first time in my life, I learned Serbian (and Bosnian and Croatian!), I learned to trust myself, and I grew up a lot. The thing I am realizing now, however, is that maybe “finding myself” doesn’t need to take place in the Balkans, or Central America, or East Africa. Maybe those are silly places to look. Maybe I can- and should- “find” myself at the source of myself: at home.

Travel does do a lot for a person, though, I will be honest about that. Traveling has taught me some new things, changed some of my values, and showed me some of my values that I am not willing to change. I have realized I am, in fact, more American than I thought (and perhaps more American than I’d like to admit). I’m coming home wearing a scarf from Kosovo and jewelry from Bosnia, reading Winnie the Pooh in Serbian (in Cyrillic!), but I am not nor will I ever be from any of those places. You can go anywhere in the world, you can make your own journey, and you can try to even aim at a certain kind of ending, but you only get one beginning, the same way you only get one father. Now I see that, and staying in Belgrade, even if it is to work for a humanitarian aid organization, seems both frivolous and selfish.

My favorite Serbian proverb is “Svuda pođi, kući dođi.” It means “Go everywhere, come home.” There are two interpretations I’ve heard. One is that you can go anywhere and everywhere in the world and be at home there, and that’s the meaning I originally fell in love with. The other meaning is that you can go anywhere in the world, but you should always return home, to your roots, to your people, and that’s the meaning I’ve got tucked in my back pocket now.

I probably won’t write here anymore. After all, “Today I went to the grocery store, asked for something in my native language, and got exactly what I expected!” is simply not a compelling story. If you’re so interested and invested in me that that kind of story would be compelling for you, we’re probably close enough for you to call me and ask me those kind of questions… or else you’re stalking me, which is creepy, so stop.

This whole entry runs the risk of being overly sweet and sentimental, so I might as well push it over the edge with some song lyrics I loved as a 12- year- old. It makes me feel silly, but I do think Dar Williams’ words apply here. She writes:

Here’s something I finally faced, I finally think I come from someplace, and this is not a romance with the road.

She’s right, you know. You can love the road and enjoy the journey, and maybe one day I’ll court these kind of adventures again, but for now, I finally think I come from someplace, and that’s enough. Dosta. Enough.