Anxiety, Desperation, and a sore throat.
My fingers shake as I play the System of a Down CD for the fiftieth time today…a constant reminder of 2005 when I first landed my feet in Armenia. It has been two years since then…and I have been counting down the days till my next arrival. My plane leaves in about 6 hours and words cannot express what is going through my mind. I haven’t been able to sleep for a week and because of that I got sick. When I went to work on Monday my boss asked me to go get lunch and I completely got every single order WRONG. My boss yelled at me, “Rita!!!! What the heck was going through your head”…I wanted to tell him the truth, that every waking moment since the pilgims and interns left I think about Armenia and what is going on and who’s seeing what and who is feeling how…and yada yada yada, but he wouldn’t understand.
My emotions and anxiety are eating me alive as I picture my plane landing…stepping out of the plane…what will I do first? What will I smell first? What will I eat first? Who will I see?…I have been running the scenarios in my head so much so that I don’t even know what to expect anymore. Will the Orran kids still remember me? How will they be? How much have they grown? Is square one and artbridge still there? What will it taste like now? Is it still the best food I have ever had in my life? What will the city smell like?!?! I can’t wait to breathe the air in Yerevan and cough because of the smog of the cars….but I love it, because it is Armenia. It is what I have been waiting for, for two years and finally…my day is here.
I will arrive in Yerevan on Friday morning. I can’t tell you what I will do first…but just know that I will have the hugest smile on my face and in my heart as I run…not walk…through the whole entire city….I want to throw my hands up and scream…but who knows. All I know is that the last time I went to Armenia, I had no expectations, I didn’t know what lied ahead of me…even after my trip was over…I didn’t know the curve balls life would throw at me, the friends I would be blessed with, and I didn’t know that my last happiest moments with my Father would be sharing my experience in Armenia with him. Now I get to do it all over again…and I don’t remember when the last time I felt this happy was…oh ya..it was in 2005.
July 18th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Rita!!!!
I love you! I miss you… already! I just got off the phone with you as you axiously await for your connection to Vienna, Austria. Sitting there, watching the luggage while Will does his business… I invision myself sitting next you as I was in 2005. Questioning what the definition of D.C. meant (District of Columbia-thanks David), rubbing our swollen cankles- I am quite envious of your journey to Armenia, yet again.
As you may not know what you will do when you first arrive, I do. You will walk through the airport passing the station where you and I were kept for a good 30 min as the turkish/armenian attandants would not let us through due to the belief that we were trying to do something illegal while the rest of the interns wait for our return, Sureen and David curiously look down from the upper level of the airport knowing exactly what is going on but yet still do nothing about the situation- a smile will come to your face! The first smells will be the infamous smell of B.O., something which we lack in the U.S, will bring disgust to your face! You will get a taxi to the apartments, watching the different sceneries go by with the realiztion that much has changed from two years ago. You will arrive and be reunited, triple alliance style, with all your family and friends. You will know exactly what it is about Armenia that keeps you coming back…
Square one better still be there.