If I could only articulate

This is an excerpt from one of Brittany Shaw's emails, another tischie in Cuba, from her friend Ginny, that I think begins to touch upon the feelings of those who leave/come back and try to share:

You are so brave. I don't know what to say about how you'll be able to relate when you get back - even saying that I don't know seems like infringing on something deeply personal you're going to have to go through. It seems unfair that you have to go through living abroad on your own (plus your group) and then when you get back, you will have to deal with these dual worlds now existing in your life and memory, also alone. We'll probably seem really frustrating and stupid. And no matter how much you tell or show us, we'll never really understand what it was and is like. But maybe that's just the thing. In all of our experiences, however drastically different, we are the solitary bearer of a singular perspective and the experience of that experience. We live with the memories of all of them every day, floating around somewhere in our heads. And it's terrifying. To realize that we are each living in a separate reality, a little bit. That where you've been is somewhere different than where I've been - even if we've both been in the same place for a long time. And by going somewhere very different and for a very long amount of time, and then returning to what we think of as a cohesive reality, it throws the entire terrifying matter into examination. And maybe we come to the conclusion that we've always known. That that which we are experiencing and with whom we are experiencing it is sacred and temporary. (Sacred because it is so fleeting - and perhaps, fleeting because it is so sacred.) And soon it will cease to exist except within ourselves - and within every other person there, from wherever place they happened to be standing. It's the same here, same everywhere, I want to think. Only here we won't bear the burden of sudden change in a month - it is not as if I will need to attempt to explain to you what the common room looked like this past semester (although one day they did bring in the ugliest black tables and I nearly had a panic attack!). I think no amount of understanding on our part will satisfy you, or could. It's the scariest thing to consider the extent to which our experiences are solitary or even our lives, solipsistic. (The current anxiety is not of EXISTING at all, René - but of existing alone.) I think the comfort is to be found in the memory, maybe. And the art. And the fact that we are creating new memory as we attempt to understand the past ones. And that regardless of the degree to which our experiences differ, from being side by side in separate heads to the farthest reaches of the world apart, they will be different. And the joy in sharing, in creating impressions of that once fleeting experience for those we love to also experience, that's the thing, maybe. Our stories are shadows of our once first-hand experiences - and through our stories, however they are told, those shadows become first-hand experiences for someone else. In this way, we aren't alone. We aren't ever alone. Because you continue to exist with the imprints of my memories, and I with yours. And suddenly our shadows are crossing, making different shades of light and dark. And something unifying has been created. Maybe that's what art is. Maybe I'm full of shit and about to get my period and feeling ugly and alone. (But ah - the point I forgot to make! You being there means that the only place isn't just here - at this specific and singular moment in time. And if here is not the only place existing at this moment in time - then certainly, I am not the only thing existing at this particular point in time. And that means I'm not alone - you're not alone - there is no alone. Not quite so snappy as I think, therefore I am (and maybe it should be so simple) but as Carrie Bradshaw says, the loneliness is palpable!!! Don't know where I'm going with this. Ha, I feel fucking alone. I feel like a fool. Wish we could go to Hogwarts and have wands.)