Homesick for Change - Traveling through a Wormhole

Being in another country for a long time is a weird thing.  I didn't move here with the intention of staying forever so, unlike a normal move, I guess I still see Tucson and my old life there as home.  In reality, however, I don't know that it is.

The second school year at the middle school has started.  None of my students are there anymore.
Several of my good friends have moved away while I've been gone.
And when I look at facebook.... it seems like, daily, good friends are getting engaged, married, and having babies.

I feel like I'm in this sort of vortex where I went into a parallel universe  Or like I went through a worm hole like in the movie, Contact  where the time in space would move a lot slower for her than it would on earth... causing her to return to a very different reality.  It's like my old life went on pause (for me) and now I have such different experiences.  The part that strikes me from time to time, is that one day I will shift my universe again and will see that life wasn't actually on pause just because I walked away from the TV.  It was actually a play, that continued on and changed whether I was there or not.

I guess that's what they call part of reverse culture shock - integrating yourself back into your "old" life..... although, it will never really be the same.  But then again, nothing ever is.

I still feel the longing, though, to be a part of it all.  I am sooooo fortunate to have this opportunity to do what I am doing.  Does that mean, though, that I will miss this life stage of being in weddings, helping raise babies, attending 10 year HS reunions?  These normal rights of passage of being a young adult will not be a part of my experience.  I guess I can't be everywhere at once.... but I can spend one morning wanting to be.