Camila Cabello, Holden Caulfield and Trip Lee are my best friends right now.

Camila Cabello, in her breakout single “Havana”, sings “Half of my heart is in Havana.” Holden Caulfield, that kid who you either loved or hated in 10th grade English, spends the duration of The Catcher in the Rye feeling trapped between the innocence of childhood and the…whatever it is…of adulthood. Trip Lee recorded the album Between Two Worlds, centered around the feeling of being pulled between the realm of God and the world.

What I’m trying to say is, I’ve been feeling pulled in two directions lately.

The pull was first felt twice in a three-day period. In late October, I FaceTimed my old roommate for the first time since I left. We caught up, had some banter, a few of my friends popped into frame to ask how I was doing, and then he hung up after he recommended I watch The Haunting of Hill House and I told him I wanted to finish Avatar: The Last Airbender first. (Which one of us watched all of The Blacklist seasons in a two-week span, Mitch? You overestimate my power!) I shook my head and tossed my iPad on the bed. It was about 2:30 in the morning, and I started getting ready for bed. I paused and thought over the good times of freshman year, and I felt something like a hole open up inside of me. I shook it off and went to bed.

I couldn’t shake off the next time it happened. I was walking to school and listening to music, per usual. Lecrae’s “I’ll Find You” slid through my shuffle as I reached campus. I paused and listened to Tori Kelly’s chorus:

Just fight a little longer my friend
It’s all worth it in the end
But when you got nobody to turn to
Just hold on, and I’ll find you
I’ll find you
I’ll find you
Just hold on, and I’ll find you

If the hole had been previously poked open with a stick, it was now blown open with a cannonball. I found myself leaning against a tree, trying to avoid crying in the middle of campus. Oh God, I miss home!

The term “liminal space” was introduced to me in my literature class. I looked it up and found this quote from a friar named Richard Rohr: “…where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown…”

If that doesn’t describe me right now, I don’t know what does.

On the one hand, I don’t want the experience of Spain to end. At some point, I finally reached the threshold point of speaking Spanish where I could have a conversation  I’m sure in those conversations, I still sound like a third-grader with a head injury, but the point still stands. I’ve laid down roots: I have a great host family, have made friends from Spain, other American colleges and other places on the globe, and have learned so much, even if the Spanish university system kind of stinks. (Hey, I said I’ve grown to appreciate the country; I said nothing about liking the country’s inner workings.) I’ve made possibly the deepest connections I’ve ever made with the other Calvin kids who came with me, and have made some of my best memories alongside them.

On the other hand, I know I’m living in a snapshot, that just as the Detroit and the Calvin College I will return to will not be the Detroit or the Calvin I left, the Spain I could return to will not be the Spain I left. My friends, Calvin or otherwise, will scatter.  My host parents are in their golden years; it’s a very real possibility that one or both of them will be dead if I ever return.

There’s also the changes I will return home to: political changes (hello, Michigan legalizing marijuana and Republicans’ incompetence being back in my bubble!), a freshman class virtually unknown to me, changes in my group of friends (new relationship count as of today: 5), and changes in myself.

Perhaps an analogy is the best way to close what I feel like is a very confusing blog. My high school, Henry Ford Academy, is a very unusual school. Along with, you know, sharing ground with a museum, the 10-12 campus is in a bowl of sorts, with a hill leading down to the campus. It’s HFA tradition that on the seniors’ last day, the other three classes gather on either side of the hill so the seniors can say their goodbyes to their underclassmen friends before moving on to the next stage of life.

I’m at the hill point. At the bottom of the hill is my time in Spain, a time I know is coming to an end and a chapter I am both happy and sad is ending. At the top of the hill is my life back home: familiar, but with enough of an unknown factor that it makes me apprehensive.

The only place I can go is forward.