Leaving Leadville

I am lucky enough to have my own private writing tutor. She happens to be the Head of School for a private school in Manhattan and she was an English teacher at Groton for 20 years. I am really lucky as she may be the very best English teacher I will ever have!

She asked me to write a paper about what it was like to leave Leadville. It was hard because I struggle with writing about my feelings but after a few drafts I got a great outcome. She suggested I post it to the blog so here it is:

Leaving Leadville on June 19 2013 unbalanced me. Built up feelings exploded and hit me. It was like being hit with a bunch of bombs that had been waiting for a long time and then had exploded, filling my head with enough different feelings to overwhelm an entire army. The first bomb to go off was excitement. It filled me with lots of energy. A new life was beginning! In a single wave all my excitement, happiness, and energy collapsed into sadness almost everything I knew and loved was being swept away. My friends, the familiarity and comfort of Leadville were waning. Over the next few months Leadville's comfort to me would drop dramatically. The sadness swept over me like clouds over the sun before a rainstorm. The next bomb hit and the future rushed at me. We were plunging into the unknown. I couldn't say more than "Bonjour" and "Bon Appétit" in French. I was very nervous, but at the same time I was curious. Hundreds of questions raced through my head. Some of them were asked, very few were answered. I was more curious then I could keep track of. The strongest feeling was the anticipation. Two years, I had waited two years for this day. How was I supposed to feel? All that anticipation was released the moment the plane touched down in Paris.

Since June 19, 2013 I've changed in many ways. I have learned to adapt to the changing circumstances and have grown both physically and mentally. Physically I'm stronger. I've grown and I'm older. I' have also lost teeth and lots of other things like that. I also am better at a few talents like swimming but my perspective of the world as well as myself has changed. My sense of Geography has changed because of moving so slowly. When I travel slowly, look at lots of charts, and cover large distances I begin to realize the details of a coast. Because of lots of traveling I can make connections to books and monuments as well as beginning to understand where famous places are. I am also much more adaptable to the changing circumstances. We often change countries which means kinds of food is also changing. Most people can count on certain kinds of foods being at their local grocery store. On Sila going shopping is a crazy experience. I always hope that something at a new store tastes good. In other words I enter every grocery store thinking, "Please sell something other than broccoli, please sell something other than broccoli." Walking up to strangers has also become easier for me. I now can much more willingly walk around on the docks and look for other to English-speaking kids to meet. I'm much more confident. I realize that change is a part of life that sometimes can be hard. Recently I have experienced some hard as well as easy changes. After struggling through more and more challenging changes I have come to realize how much easier it is change your lifestyle and take advantage of new changes than to fight  change and try to keep everything around you the same.

Since we left Leadville my memory of Leadville has changed considerably. My memory has probably changed more than I realize. When I was looking at pictures of Leadville on the internet I noticed lots of details that I hadn't remembered. Some examples are: the color of the Tabor Opera House, The bowl on Mt. Elbert, and the coffee shop's name. There were some day to day activities and games that always happened. Back then, all these activities seemed perfectly normal but now they seem crazy, weird, and even a little foolish. I've attempted these activities but doing them makes me feel foolish. For example I used to run around the Leadville house and play Roman Gladiator. I tried it on a deserted beach in France but I just felt foolish. But my most considerable memory difference is that Leadville is no longer home. I just can't think of it as home. I think of it as the place I used to live or where I began growing up.