Reading on another friend's blog, "I had a bad day yesterday" reminded me it's okay to have them. Granted, she's been living in Nigeria for the past seven months or so sweating it out in long skirts in the dust and hospitals. Check her out here: No Zebras Here!
It's sinking in. I'm back in New York, in the house I grew up in. And I answer truly honestly to the question, "So, are you glad to be back?" (I feel like everyone who knows me holds their breath in anticipation and anyone who doesn't lets it out assuming my relief to be here). The answer is no. I am not glad to be back here. It's been wonderful seeing people again but coming back gets harder every time. I did not cry. Okay, I cried for an hour once the Currans put me on the bus, but I haven't cried. It's more like despondency.
I have this friend living in Argentina and he's homesick and I have a hard time sympathizing.
The pressure of getting school done is in full force, especially saying goodbye to my classmates and friends at their graduation last weekend. The need to get a job is guilting me.
On the up side, it's almost totally safe to say that the lice have been demolished at last and my hair is bug free! I've been away from New Zealand for a little over three weeks now but it feels like that was another life that happened ages ago. It was really. It doesn't feel real.
I sleep on three beds now. I might add my futon on top tonight just to make it four. After sleeping in a damp bed, freezing tents, on cement, in a car, on the floor, on planes... And now I sleep on four beds stacked so high it's hard for me to climb up.
Stepping back for a moment-
What is this? Four beds? A washer and dryer down the stairs? Where am I? Seriously. The world of problems like disease, exposure to the elements, and children dying right now seems so far away and unrelated to my life. How does that relate to my life in any way? My own problems from the last eight months don't even seem like a possibility.
I literally have almost nothing substantial to do. This entire Wednesday of the 30 May 2012 was, in my life, devoted to making a package to send a friend of mine. I made cookies and packaged it with care and duct tape but that was pretty much what my day amounted to because, well, what's the rush?
Part of me wants to get out there and get busy and find a job and rush around again but mostly the other part of me is winning the daily battle for time. That side has been spent re-connecting with people and considering what all I can get rid of. When you live out of a backpack for a large chunk of a year, a dresser of t-shirts, hoodies, pants, scarves, and two full drawers of socks becomes wildly excessive. That's how I feel life is right now. Needlessly excessive.
*P.S. Pavlova OWNED ME. We needed a break from each other after five attempts so I tried making New Zealand cookies called Afghans. Laugh it up. Go ahead. An American making Afghan cookies. Those cookies rocked.
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