it's still going

Before I start, let me just make it very clear that this is me needing to vent. I am aware of this. I am aware that things almost always look better with distance and time.

But right now time isn't moving fast enough and I'm feeling a little trapped.

***

I feel like I just finished something and before I can even start to breathe, there's something else I was supposed to have already begun.

It just doesn't stop.

I just want some time to appreciate the quiet.

Just a little bit.

And okay, while I'm talking in these big, broad terms, it's not all my classes. It's not everything.

It's a few (okay, one) classes that not only do I not enjoy, I feel like I'm constantly behind. And seeing as a lot of that is due to the teacher, there's nothing I can do about it.

See? It always comes back to me needing to let it go.

I need to go talk to the people who might be able to make a difference and then I need to move on.

Accept that it's out of my control.

Ha. I'm not very good at that.

The whole being chill thing isn't inherent in my personality.

***

Thanks for listening.

I'm going to go make Valentine's.

going

I am exhausted.

Sitting here, at my desk, I realize that all I want (need?) to do is sleep.

To curl up under the covers and hide from the world for a while.

This world that is so busy and crazy and complicated. If someone wanted to come and keep me company, that would be okay too. Just no thinking allowed.

I have been going going going since I got back from break and haven't really taken a second to stop.

....

Just be.

This amazing campus with activities and people and classes just goes. Constantly. We don't know how to stop and breathe.

How to sit without obsessively checking our email (or maybe that's just me).

So I got up this morning and finished my Spanish homework and wrote a letter to a boy who needs it (write one!) and talked with a professor and went to class and tried to not let my nose freeze and ate lunch and went to class and talked to a professor. And there were friends in there and long treks through the snow. A hole discovered in my rainboots. But mostly, the point is, I didn't stop.

There was always another and.

And here I was thinking I was doing well not working constantly.

I guess I have a lot to learn.

catching up

I have changed.

So much.

I feel it deep within me. And I love it.

When I'm here, with my friends, talking about the present, I don't notice it. It's just who I am. It's who I've always been to them.

It's when I talk to people back home. That's when I notice it.

Because they haven't seen me change. For them, it hasn't been a gradual process. It's sudden and huge. And to me, they're still the same people that I left. In my head, I'm the one who left, so that means I'm the only one who's changed.

I notice it when I try to catch them up.

When I think about all they don't know about me, about my life.

Trying to describe it all, trying to put it into a nice little package, that's hard.

There is no way to do it. I don't fit into a nice little box.

I don't even know where to start.

a break

Last night was wonderful.

Last night was like a Friday in the middle of my week.

It was a night where I let myself off the hook.

It's been a hard few weeks. So I stopped. I did things for fun, I didn't worry about the papers to write or the fact that I had to wake up at 7 this morning.

I finally, finally, got back to the hospital.

Even though I was only being trained to volunteer, it invigorated me.

There's something about hospitals that brings me alive.

Even this unbelievably small hospital, that was "very full" with the same number of total patients that is an average day for the floor I volunteer on back home.

I can't wait to be back. In that environment, helping people, doing what I love.

Then I went and ate cookies and listened to Christmas music and made paper snowflakes.

Then I made some more paper snowflakes and talked and watched Doctor Who.

Then I wrote a letter to a friend. A long overdue letter. Telling her I love her. Because I do. I love them and miss them, all those people back home. Sometimes it's just easier and quicker to not think about that, to not stop and take a moment to actually think and feel.

Last night was wonderful. Just the break I needed, to be able to push through these last days of the semester.

Home, Part 2

Last time when I wrote about home, there was a very clear delineation in my mind.

I had my first home, the home where I grew up.

It's the place where my parents are. Where my kitty lives. Where I know everything and everyone. I have my routines and things are comfortable.

I had my new home.

My college home.

The place I was still figuring out, where I was constantly meeting new people and learning new things.

In the past two months, those lines have been blurred. Those lines between one home and the other are no longer quite so clear.

I now have friends here. Close friends, real friends. They're my people. The ones I laugh with and cry with. Ones I know I can lean on when the times get tough. It took the times getting tough for those bonds to form.

We live together and share so much. We learn and we grow and we whine and complain.

This is my home.

Yet, I still want to go home.

I want to go to my house, I want to see my parents. When I think of that home, I think of being wrapped up in the biggest hug. It's my comfort place.

I know that I will miss this place too.

I'm all confuzzled.

I guess I can have two homes. If that's what works for me, then it's perfect.

I've also really learned that it's the people that make a place what it is. It's the people I love and miss, no matter where I am.

Three Weeks

Currently, I am many things.

There are many me's. 

The one at the forefront is the stressed version of me.

The exhausted version.

Yet this me does not stop, because she cannot stop.

This me does not see any other option than to continue.

To make it through the next three weeks. To not lose it, completely. To be awake and mostly present. To work and write and plan and talk.

To be a student for three more weeks.

Then, I don't know which me will take over.

Probably the exhausted one will kick in after a few days. After I realize I no longer have to be "on" all the time. When it sinks in that I can relax; there's no where to go, no one to see, and there are other people who will take care of the rest.

I can't let myself go there yet, though.

I have to keep going.

I have to let the stronger me's take over, and keep me going.

Three more weeks.

Letters

I desperately wanted a pen pal as a child.

I thought it was the coolest thing, sending letters back and forth across the world.

Even then, it was a novel idea.

The internet was already taking over all forms of communication.

I never let go of that dream, though.

When I was thinking about leaving for college, I thought it would be the perfect time to start writing letters. Not to go out pen pal shopping, but to use letter-writing as one way, in addition to all the technology, to stay in touch with my friends.

Surprisingly, some of my friends were on board.

We're actually writing each other real live letters.

Ones with stamps and everything.

I love it.

Every time I see a letter in my little box, it completely makes my day. I read my mail over breakfast and usually head off to face my day with a smile on my face.

It has been a wonderful way to connect (and reconnect) with friends.

There's something about putting pen to paper that makes it feel so much more personal.

***

I wrote a letter to friend, a long overdue one, last night.

And then this morning, I saw that the first task for The Happy Day Project was to write a letter. So perfect!

Unfortunately I sent off my letter before I could take any photographic evidence, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

home[s]

People laugh when I say "home" in reference to my dorm room. They think it's funny that I call it that, when everyone else says "dorm" or "room". But to me, that just sounds awkward.

And it's true, it has become my home.

Not just my room, but the whole place.

The campus, the people, the community that I have become a part of.

Feeling like I fit in a place, that's what makes it home to me.

That's not to say that my other home, the one I inhabited for almost 18 years, is any less of a home.

It's just....different.

In ways that I can't describe, that I wasn't really even aware of, until I got here.

Home.

This too, is my home.

This place where I fit and I know the routines and ways of existing.

I know this community as well.

It's been interesting, these few days of figuring this all out.

This fact that I now have two homes.

Two equally important places, but so completely different.

I also think that part of the difference stems from me.

I hadn't really thought I'd changed at school, not that I'd given it much thought.

I was still me.

Yet being here, I can feel the differences. The parts of me that don't quite fit with how I used to exist in this space.

I'm different.

And now it's a matter of reconciling the two different me's, within the two different homes.