Believe it or not, life in Saguenay has become comfortable, and leaving my life here, I have realized, is kind of scary. I may have been lost in the craziness that is the twilight zone when we first moved here, but the madness has become ordinary.
Some of the madness I faced when we moved here
The crazy driving – heck, I get ticketed when I leave Quebec so obviously I have unfotunately become accustomed to the very lax definition of road signs that is Quebec.
French – I catch myself talking to myself in French in public at times. Again, this is unfortunate since my Greek has since gone down the drain. Before moving here I used to talk to myself in Greek.
The lack of city life – I’ve actually become accustomed to the mediocre sushi, no Thai, Indian, or REAL Greek food (I cook a lot of Thai and Indian at home – and obviously I cook Greek dishes as well).
New and strange job opportunities – I had taught before when I lived in Greece for two years (before my military life) but Saguenay was different. I have taught in hospitals with chalk boards (yeah, how ghetto is that!), in office conference rooms with no board at all, in a law firm, on base with all the equipment you could imagine, and I’ve gotten quite used to the work, I actually loved it.
So why am I semi-panicking?
I’m not second-guessing our move at all (geez wouldn’t that be crazy) but I am realizing that life is very quickly going to become very foreign to me. The things that I found so difficult about Saguenay are going to become fond memories very very soon. I realized this today because (unlike Saguenay) I have a chance at finding a job very quickly in Belgium (like starting the day after we move) however it is nothing like I have ever done before. I have had many kinds of jobs, and I have many (if not all) of the skills required for this job, but it is very different from teaching. It’s going to be a whole new world. And today as I went about my day feeling like super woman due to a powerful yoga practice this morning, the floor suddenly disappeared from underneath my feet, because I received an email about the job posting and I realized how different and new this job would be.
Back to square one, once again.
I finally get why my friends have been staring at me googly-eyed asking me if I understood how quickly we will be on our way out of Saguenay. My response to this up until now has been: No not really, I don’t really believe it yet. We are about to head to our house hunting trip in a week and I’m more concerned about cleaninng the house than preparing for the move. But today it suddenly hit me, or rather it pushed me to the ground in disbelief, things are about to change drastically.
Am I ready? I think so. Can I imagine what life will be like? No, I know better than that – it’s never what you imagine it will be. It’s usually very very hard to begin with but through the turmoil and hard days and lonely nights you become stronger and the strange slowly becomes mundane, and this new place suddenly becomes home – but that takes a while. At first it’s just a lot of spinning around, trying to make sense of things, and feeling all alone.
I have a feeling that this posing will surprise me, but right now I need to get myself ready because the belief that I have more than enough time for everything is going to smack me in the face in a few weeks.
I guess it’s time to put to the test all of the lessons and skills I’ve learnt on the mat. Will I be able to embrace all of the change, keep my centre and find balance in new situations?
I think I’m ready to find out.
Living yoga in a military wife's life 