Homesick?

Disclaimer: This post is a soul-searching post. It wasn't really written for you. This is one of those times where this blog isn't so much that as it is a journal. I organize my thoughts by talking them out. When for whatever reason that doesn't seem feasible, I write them down. As such, this post is scattered, nonsensical and possibly more than a little bit whiny.

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About a 15-20 minute walk from our campus here at DCU is a shopping center called Omni. We probably hit Omni at least once per week. From there, we can catch the bus to the airport, we can get our American fast-food fix (it sports a Subway, a McDonalds, and a Burger King), we can mail our postcards and we can get our groceries.

I was on a grocery trip today and when I wandered through the wine aisle, for the first time since I've been here I found a small section of Argentine malbecs. The malbec is a wine that I became familiar with as it was the perfect companion to the delicious red meats of Buenos Aires, but it stuck with me. I liked its strength, the heady punch it had. When it became my wine of choice even after I returned to Boston, I would look at the bottle's Mendoza wine label and remember a great trip where I met some amazing people and had an amazing adventure. People who know me well know that I'm a creature of habit. I find comfort in things like eating the same kind of sandwich, drinking the same kind of smoothie, the same kind of wine. I find something I like and I stick with it. I found the malbec in Argentina, and I stuck with it in Boston.

I haven't thought until right now whether or not there might be a deeper meaning to why I do that. I always thought it was because I was lazy, or uncomplicated in that way - where if I found something I like, why ignore it? Why not embrace it? But thinking about it right now, I think there might be something else to it.

I move around a lot. In two years, I've lived in three different countries, in all of seven different "homes". For someone who hates packing up and moving around more than pretty much anything, it seems like I've made quite the habit of it. When I feel homesick, I don't long for a place. I don't think about a house or an apartment. More than anything I think of people - friends mostly, but lately, surrounded by the unfamiliar, the people who make my sandwiches at ABP, my smoothies at Freshens, my meals at Bombay get quite a bit of affection as well. I miss being able to walk into a place and be recognized, I miss getting my food before I even order because everyone knows what I want. That might sound spoiled and high maintenance but that's not how its meant - I also miss being comfortable enough in a place that I get teased by the staff for being there 3+ times per week.

Pretty soon after I started out on these adventures of mine, I realized how important home is to me. I cannot even begin to describe the value that I put on the friendships I have - they are the most important thing in the world to me, and I would go to the ends of the earth to protect them. For years, home has been less of a place for me, and more so a group of people that I've relied on to fill that gap. I absolutely do not underestimate the incredible opportunities that have allowed me to make my college experience into what it has been, but recently I've realized that it has come at what I believe to be a considerable cost. Since I've began college, I have never actually been able to settle. I can't go more than a few months without having to put relationships on hold, without having to pick up and readjust, restructure my support system, come up with a new strategy to deal with life's challenges. Maybe that's why I take the comfort I do in things that seem so trivial - ABP's smoked turkey club wrap, Freshens' Caribbean Craze smoothie, the raspberry chipotle chicken salad at Quiznos. As stupid as it sounds, those things are home to me. They're comforting. Just like sitting down with a good malbec is comforting.

Just a little over a month ago I had to write an essay stating why I would make a good candidate for the international co-op program. I said that I thrive on new challenges. I believed that to be true when I wrote it, and I guess I'm not quite ready to discount it yet. But here I am, in a foreign country, taking some of the most difficult courses I've ever taken, busier than I've ever been, with great opportunities to both learn from and make an impression on a new place, and seemingly endless challenges - projects for work that require that I roll together all of my experiences in international education to create a new, comprehensive product; projects for classes that require that I collaborate across time zones to produce a product in conjunction with students across an ocean; the search for a co-op job that requires me to establish an un-ignorable presence from thousands of miles away. Do I feel challenged? Absolutely. Am I thriving? Absolutely not. I am anxious. I am exhausted. I feel more isolated than I've ever felt in my life, as if slowly but steadily I'm being stripped of every support system I've managed to build for myself, and as if every new challenge is just a reminder of that fact. I feel weak, and because of that I feel quite a bit terrified, because I find myself under the impression that there is no end in sight.

This week I got an email from one of the best friends anyone could ask for. It talked about nostalgia, it reminisced for a time when all of us could be a little bit more careless, when we didn't have to think about things like GPAs and careers and student loans and resumes and interviews. When we had summer vacations and could stay up all night watching movies and talking and driving til the sun came up and then sleep all day the next day, guilt-free. When we could spend money on concerts and road trips instead of on rent and bills. Someone probably told me that those were going to be the best years of my life but I kind of wish I had paid more attention.

I sound so old! I sound so jaded! And I HATE it. I hate that dumb things like real life are getting in the way of me being young and carefree and happy. The kicker is? I don't ever remember feeling carefree, even back then. I guess I'm a little worried that I might have missed my chance.

I'm rambling. I have a pile of work that I can't even bring myself to look at. Work about suicide bombings and terrorist politics and the questionable feasibility of "true" democratic politics in Latin America. Sometimes I wish that 3 years ago when I got myself into this stuff someone had slapped me across the face and reminded me that I do actually like things like cinema studies and art.

The Omni center is fully decked out in all of the Christmas glory that any mall deserves. Anamatronic Santas and glittery trees hanging from the ceiling and everything else. It has been for a couple weeks now. Seemed early to me too. Then I realized it's because we'd missed Thanksgiving. I've never been without at least some sort of Thanksgiving before.

I bought the malbec in the supermarket today. I was excited for it. But for some reason I almost don't want to touch it. I bought it because it was something familiar that I could be nostalgic for. I thought it reminded me of home, but I guess these days I can't quite pin down what home even is anymore. Sometimes it feels like it doesn't exist at all.