I will be leaving my Xalapeña house in 5 hours to return to Texas. I am confused right now as one part of me is absolutely ecstatic to go home to family and friends and driving on long stretches of Texas highways. The other part of me is sorrowed to leave this country I have just begun to become acquainted with. There is so much to Mexico that I have yet to see or experience and I’m leaving it to go back to my own safe world, comfortable and free of being lost.
But the sorrow I feel from leaving comes from my own disappointment of not being as… enlightened… about this country, or myself, as I wanted to be back in July. Indeed, I am still deeply ignorant of this country but what I can say is that Mexico is revealed to me to be such a complex and rich country full of juxtapositions. It is a culturally diverse land where over 63 languages are spoken, and where with every year, more and more of those languages are lost to the overwhelming influence from our globalized world. It is a country with an incredible wealth of natural resources and at the same time an incredible amount of poverty. In the end though, it is a country that I am in no way qualified to categorize or attempt to define. These few short months have shown me that I have only scratched the surface of Mexico. There is so much depth to this country and its people that even after almost five months of living here, Mexico still calls to me like a distant land, waiting to be explored.
And yet, further adventures in Mexico will have to wait, for right now I have home to go to, the holidays to share with my family, and the past five months to reflect on as I work for mom in the kennel. Oohhh it will be nice to be around dogs again.
Here’s to the night and the journey ahead.
CLB Collins 