I used to get that all the time.

Mistaken for a European, that is. It happened all of the times that I was in Europe - either with friends, school, or just on my own. Even now, it would still happen.

Just the last time we were there my husband and I got our picture taken by Americans, claiming that we were the cutest European couple. We got made fun of to our face in English by Americans who didn't think we understood them. We have been spoken to in Italian and German by Italians and Germans. It has even gone so far as to get shocked and horrified faces when I tell a native European that I am in fact not German or French or even British, but that I am American.

But that was all fair enough. I was in Europe. I do speak German. I can see that much.

However, now I work in a pretty faux-European Gelateria (by an American Corporation), which I am leaving soon -but that is for another time and another day. Now, I get people not asking me the ridiculous, "So, are you Italian????" as I was apt to get the first few weeks I had worked here.

No, now practically two years has elapsed and most people are over that silliness.
Instead, now I get earnest questions of, "Where are you from?!" in complete bafflement that I might be American.

Even after saying, "Oh, I'm just American." I am forced to explain my heritage and/or why I have a funky accent because people just won't have it. When I out with the German/French heritage, I always get:

"I knew it. I knew you weren't American."

A man from Mexico was the most recent just a few moments ago.
It's wonderful because I don't agree with/like/want to live in America at all. So I am grateful.

But I'm also very perplexed.

Today must have been the strangest day.

Often, I find the that the past sneeks up on one. Declaring with a suddenly all-too-loud voice, "Here I am. Had you forgotten me?"

That's how this week has been. Partly, it's making me wonder. Partly making me nausious. Partly coming to an understanding:

We are prepared to move. The moment is inevitable. It is coming.
So is the end of this.
All this.

That doesn't answer questions, exactly. Instead, it leads to more wonder. What answers questions is what I do with this past that is constantly presenting itself to me.

I think I will analyze it and let it go. Look to it for answers and move on. Concentrate on the complication of it all, sort it out, and continue to be the spectre that I am.

I like being a ghost in these strange days. It lets the past wonder about me.

Also, Ich spreche Deutsch. Ich brauche viele Worte und viele uebung ueber meine Grammatik. Dann ich kann Deutsch sehr besser sprechen.
Das ist alles.

That will make the past even more confused. And me even more clear.

I'm not keeping these things secret

Eventually, we are all one day invited into this adult world that our parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents have all been a part of - it seems - their entire lives. But we are confused as we're pulled in to this world where everything costs no-one anything and we are no longer "compelled to do what we must", but whatever we like.

A world where every moment we choose our own destiny, selfishly. Where bills and weekend determine our days and schedules someone else decides determine our lives. This world where we're so confoundedly busy, all of the time. A world where no-one knows why or where all of the time is going anymore. A world that never made any sense, and somehow still doesn't.

This world of adults is making me come to some serious decisions - making me come to new conclusions. Making me see that no-one makes my life but me. That I'm never stuck.

As Rob Bell - or Rob Bell's friend puts it: that no matter where or why I am where or why I am, I don't have to live like that.

This world is not my home.

Things that, as a child, seemed so cliched are slowly and suddenly starting to make themselves more clear to me in this adult world.

This is the time when patters evolve, when everyone else is getting around to settling into the groove that will determine the rest of their lives.

I am beginning to see that I am, too.

We've got a motto we're now defining, a pattern we're suddenly deciding, a ritual we're clearly designing. Because, here - we're at the start, at the place where this adult world gets its designations. And we're the ones making the calls.

It's our time now.

Our holidays. Our sisters and our brothers and our parents making up the aunts and the uncles and the grandparents that we've always thought existed all along. It's our traditions and our words and our ways of life that the young ones will remember. It's our past that will be their history. It's us that defines the family.

I've only felt this old once before. And then, I stopped growing for the next four years. I was sixteen and it was Missouri. I wasn't a child anymore, and I felt it. I was beginning to see the world through new eyes. Eyes I closed after that moment for four years, trying to change someone else's eyes. Only to be awakened at the end and find that it was the first day of seventeen again, and in the past years - I had gotten nowhere.

This year has been similar in ways; Hard. But we knew it was going to be.

Easy is bullshit.

So now, I'm starting to see. I'm twenty-four and my eyes are finally wide open. We're almost one year old and our heart, finally, is wide open.

We're going to go test the world and see how badly it can fail.
And when it does, we'll start all over again. Because that's what we are. That's just what we do.

We're test strips in this world, and we will tell it how it's going.

So from here on out, I am air: with no past and an infinite future; and I am ash: with an infinite past and no future. And I am Lennix: with an indefinite beginning and a clear transformation; and I am Ashenden: with an inherited beginning and an open transformation.

From here, I am grown.
From here, I am growing.