Puzzle Pieces

     I love words. I love learning new words, and using the ones I already know to express myself and calm my often overactive mind. Most of the time, writing comes very easily to me, but every once in a while I get stuck. I don't call it writers block, because to me, writers block is when you don't know what you want to say. I do know what I want to say, I just don't know exactly how to say it. But I have a compulsion to try, and so that is what I am doing.

Travelling to Togo and living there for three weeks was experience that changed me, and then I came back to a place that had not changed at all. I came back to a familiar routine, and people that know me well. I came back to my family, my friends, my job, and in many ways that was a positive thing. But there is a flip side to all of those positives, For many people, it would probably be easy, and even comforting, to return to a familiar life. Three weeks doesn't sound like a long time, but three weeks in a new country was enough to change something within me, something that so far I have been unable to put my finger on.
     It's as if my life here was a puzzle that I had always fit right into, but when I came back one of my edges had been bent and torn just a little bit, so that piece that fit perfectly before was now unable to fit back in all the way. Not enough to ruin the whole puzzle, but enough to make a noticeable imperfection in the once smooth picture. So where do I go from here? Do I try to fit my piece back in, or do I accept the fact that this particular puzzle is one I no longer fit into?
     I don't know what comes next. I don't have any wise words about the lessons I've learned from these feelings, because I am still in the process of learning them. I do know that not fitting into this puzzle doesn't bother me as much as it once did, and that feels like a step in the right direction.