What am I doing?

Well. Today I wrote my resignation letter to AIU and in less than two months, my contract with them will be terminated, as well as my time in Turkey. Turkey time terminated. As usual, I have mixed feelings about it. Mostly, I feel excited to move on to something new and to be back home in the US again for at least the next couple of years. But fairly often, I'll have a moment that rips at my heart in a more visceral way than when I've been preparing to leave other places. It hurts more, like a small smack of failure, and of finality.

Today, for example, when I went to save my resignation letter on my computer. I hit save and navigated to the AIU folder and was confronted with all of the electronic things I've done and saved here...in folders like TurkishLessons, CreativeUseOfEnglishPlans, IntermediateCoordinatingMeetings, TestingFiles, Year2, Year3, and the one that hit me most: AIU_ApplicationandPrepDocs, created way back at the beginning of this current life, before I even got here. And now I'm saving the file that will end it: AIUResignationLetter. It hurts. But despite moments like this, I can't imagine staying. I can't imagine carrying on here for even another month past June.

The past three years, particularly this year, have been odd, like my life has been in limbo. And I don't know what has happened to me. Things seem less funny. The world seems less promising, less bright. I also feel less funny and less promising or bright as a person. Which may have been evident on this here blog. This increasingly depressed and neglected little blog. Fewer opportunities feel like they're waiting out there for me to grab on to. I guess it's partly due to going through an awkward transition from 'hey i'm young i'm carefree i'm a world traveler there's lots to do and i'm never bored' to 'i'm 35 and what, exactly, am i doing?' For now, I'm resigning. From AIU, from teaching, from Turkey, from living abroad. Until further notice.

But I do have a few things lined up for the not too distant future, trusting that I make it that far, enshallah. I'll go home (well, whatever home means anymore) and spend a few weeks with my mom in Henderson and a few weeks in Reno with my sister and dad and little brothers, and hopefully some old friends. I'll go back to New Jersey for six weeks for another internship with ETS. I'll hopefully visit New York City and Princeton and, with luck, reacquaint myself with feeling like I sort of fit in, like I sort of belong somewhere. Hopefully. Also, with luck, I'll get a full time job with ETS and spend the next few years living in one place with one job making a good set of friendships and living a life that I mostly love, a life that expands and grows and continues to learn and experiment. A promising life, a bright life. At least I still have a tiny bit of optimism lurking around in these old bones.

And as for Turkey? I'll miss her at times, no doubt. Her kind people, her beauty, her history, her food. I don't think she'll miss me much, though. And I do worry about her future. My future feels a bit shaky, but her future feels unfathomable and, if anything, dark. As much as I'd like to say that I feel perfectly safe here, as much as I'd like to say that everyone should come visit, I can't. Things don't really feel like they're going to get better any time soon. What might ISIS have in store for this place? What's going to happen to the Kurdish people here and what might they do in return? How are the Syrian refugees going to be treated as more are sent back and as more arrive? Why are protesters treated with such brutality, and what is up with the way journalists just disappear? These questions darken much of Turkey's charm and they are questions that will only be answered over time, in the future. The answers to these questions I'll continue to watch unfold, but from a safer distance, and I have the feeling the answers will sometimes hurt. But hopefully some of the answers will be promising. Hopefully some of the answers will be bright.