June, How I Loathe Thee

June is the worst.

Seriously, I hate it.

As a teacher, I hate June because I say goodbye to students…some who are leaving for good and some who are simply leaving my daily life.  Sure, I teach middle school now…it shouldn’t be as emotional or hard since most of my students will still have me for math next year.  But not all of them will.  That’s reason #4 for June being my least favorite.

Reason #3 is the unknown of summer.  I never realized how much I like structure, but I do.  I love it.  I long for it.  Rules are there to be followed and to help the world make sense.  (I know, I know…doesn’t sound like something a normal person would say.  I know I’m not normal…I came to grips with that long ago.)  Summer is a time of unknowns and chaos.  Sure, it’s fun for a week or two, but then it stops being fun and starts being semi annoying.  That’s the point where I stop being a useful human being and start watching a Korean drama while living on my couch for 2 weeks…

Reason #2 for my loathing of June is graduation.  I’ve never enjoyed graduations, but at least in the States there is the summer after the ceremony to enjoy your friends and have one last hurrah before heading off to college.  In the international community, however, graduation means something very different.  Graduation is that last big event before everyone leaves.  You won’t see your friends at the grocery store the next week, because most of them will have already flown to a totally different region of the world.  Making plans to go to the movies? Not happening without a $2000 plane ticket thrown into the mix.  Well then, there's always Christmas break, right?  Some of the families will be relocating in the next few weeks, maybe never to return to your beloved city of graduation again.  It's over.  Normal has officially disappeared and the unknown is all there seems to be.

I have yet to attend a graduation at CDIS.  I can’t handle it.  The pain that washes over me when I think of the loss that those students are about to experience is too vast.  It brings back my past pain in a way that little else can.  Being a TCK is hard, and graduations in this setting are a very real and wonderful yet horrible reminder of one of the toughest aspects of this life.

But even with the pain of graduation, that’s not the worst thing about June.  Reason #1 that I detest June is that everyone leaves.  It’s not just the graduates, and alright it’s not actually everyone, but so many people do leave.  Good friends leave.  People you never really got a chance to know leave.  Students leave. Coworkers leave.  Random strangers leave.  Someone important to me always seems to leave. I thought that as I lived in this city longer things would get easier. Ha!  Not even close.  Every year dearer and dearer friends leave.  They were here before I got here, so they’ve been around at least 4 years at this point. I’ve been here 3.  That’s 36 months of bonding, movie nights, dinners out, after parties, and discussing work stress.  That’s 156 weeks of Sunday mornings, Wednesday meetings, and Mondays.  That’s 1068 days of living life in the same city.  And then they’re gone.

And most people that leave don’t come back, even for a visit.

And suddenly, life will never be the same…

…but it always manages to go on.

Welcome to June.  Ew.