Ah

Fuuuckkk, I have a feeling this is going to be big.
School ends next Friday. Work ends the week after that. Apartment ends that same week.
Then I'm moving onto something I've been trying to fight so hard against but chose out of my own unknowing will so long ago.
The song "Koi ga shitai" by Yura Yura Teikoku's been in my mind, especially after a sweet rendition a couple of us performed at karaoke last week. If you can find it, the sound of it pretty much describes how I feel right now.
I'm losing focus on what comes next, I think because my mind is staying so much on how I wish I could be here another year, how I made a mistake choosing to be here for just one, and all that. But I suppose there's a time when you have to move on past everything. Just feels like this one could have waited had I had the correct foresight before.
But then again, I might have been deploring the thought of being here for another year had I chosen to hang onto this chance back in February.
I've also been thinking, it would never be easy to leave, in fact, it would only get harder the longer I stayed. It just feels like I could have enjoyed another year living here in this community.
I went to a function for returning JETs who had signed up to be "goodwill envoys" upon returning to their home countries. It was amazing to feel the reluctance with which I set out to leave my tiny town and make my way to the big city of Kobe and, once I got there, the desire I had to get away from all the loud sounds and lights and people everywhere, the lack of any mountains or trees or birds or bugs, the abundance of big, Western-styled buildings, and be back in my comfortable, quiet town and apartment. It's not even that I want to stay in Japan. I want to stay in this town, to keep getting to know and be a part of this community. It was an eye-opener, though, going to that assembly, that I am leaving soon, that most of the people who leave do so after two years, and that I don't have anymore time to change the path I've chosen.
But I think I've come to know a lot of the people who I live and work with. I've had so many moments and conversations with people here, that perhaps many JETs who can't speak Japanese take longer to find. But that's not really important, my mind tells me. What matters is you, your experience.
It was good. It was really amazing. I learned an incredible amount, not through my mind, but through my heart, and I had been missing that, and possibly not even knowing it. That is how I want to live, through my heart.
I don't know how things are going to be when I get back. I want to say "back home," but this place, my apartment and my town, really have become my home in a new way. Here has been my home where I have grown and matured and learned so much about the world and myself that I would never have learned if I had stayed at "home" in L.A. I feel that when I go back to L.A., I'm going to have to find a new "home," rather than return to the old one. This doesn't mean necessarily moving out of my family's house, but rather, having to reinvent everything with which I surround myself, that I allow into my spirit and heart, and that I pour myself into. Because I will not go back to the way I was before. It's impossible, beyond my control. But within my control, I will not let myself slide back toward the way things were before. The way I live when I go back must be how I live now, on my own, and always amazed, always in love with everything and everyone, with no anchors or obligations, with only things I love to do and love to find out.
I've listened to that song on repeat at least 5 times now.
I started to feel ready to go back somewhere in that passage, but now I'm back to how I felt when I started it.
Blah.
Things will come, things will go. I will think less and feel more about which ones I let go by and which ones I hold onto a little longer next time.