Are You Excited to Come Back?

Are you excited to come back? The next five weeks' most popular words.

Each of you out there, at one moment or another, is probably going to ask us that. "Wow, an entire year has gone by. So, are you excited to come back?"

When you ask us, we'll want to be polite, and we'll want to keep the awkwardness to a minimum, so we'll tell you what you want to hear. "Well yeah, I'm excited to eat Chipotle and Dairy Queen Blizzards. I'm excited to sleep in a nice bed. I'm excited to see people I haven't seen in a while. Hot water faucets will be nice, and so will central heating, and so will reliable internet and transportation."

And while all those individual things might be true, our answer to your question isn't the truth.

Are we excited to come back?

No. We're not.

We're not excited to just pick up everything and leave behind a life in which we've become so comfortable. We're not excited to get back and feel like no matter how much you try, you just won't understand what we're feeling. We're not excited to try to explain the past year to you and know that words could never really make anyone get it.

We're not excited for how lonely we are going to feel when we aren't around the kids and the friends we have lived every single second of this year with. We might also really like the person we've become while we've been here, and we are not excited to go back and risk turning into someone else again. We are not excited to get back, have no idea what we are doing next, and feel completely lost. And we are not excited that even when we do figure out what comes next, we already know it won't be able to compare to what we've just finished.

So, we know you're going to ask us. And that's okay. You've kept up with us this whole time, and that means more to us than the fact that you might ask the same uncomfortable question we've already been asked a hundred times.

But just so you know, as a warning (and as an advance apology), if you ask us "Are you excited to come back?" and we give you a yes...well, no offense, but we're probably lying to you.