Back on my grind

Well I've been back in the states now for about 5 weeks, and I hate to say that this is my first blog post following my semester in Amsterdam.  I have been dying to put my words out there since the moment we landed on United States soil, but unfortunately things like Christmas, my 21st birthday, sorority recruitment, and class have all but put me into a stress/homesick/culture shock related coma.  Yet here I am at midnight, when I should be in the cold dorm REM-ing for my 9:30 class tomorrow, trying to put into appropriate words how it feels to be home, and doing what I'm doing.

To say I underestimated coming home to culture shock would be an underestimation of the grandest kind.  Like you probably know, by the end of my trip I was very excited and ready to be coming home.  I was ready for my bed, my cat, my food, my home.

Of all the things I learned while I was gone, it was how much I value my home and my family.  It kills me to think how much I took them for granted before now.

But I thought that since I wanted to come home so badly, that I was ready.  And in a sense I was.  The holidays were wonderful, and I mostly sat around the house, resting and just soaking in family time.  The real kicker came when I had to move back to Butler.

I was so anxious and excited to see everyone, move back into DG, and get into a somewhat normal routine after my semester of intermittent classes and frequent travel.  However, the stress of homework mixed with the estrogen cascading out of a house of 90 women mixed with this new super paranoid homesickness I have acquired leaves me frazzled on most every occasion.  To spare you the gory details, I'm just still pretty overwhelmed at having to consider so many thoughts and opinions other than my own.

I don't think people would often consider me a selfish person, but after living (basically) on my own for such an extended period of time, in a place completely foreign and uncomfortable, it's nearly annoying to have to deal with petty conversations and minuscule details in a life that I now find so huge and unexplored and inviting.

I don't have time to do homework for classes I'm required to take, not when I could be researching future careers or concocting adventures or sleeping!

I don't want to be in an environment where people feel ostracized or neglected or persecuted for their opinions and feelings.

And I most certainly don't feel it necessary to deal with people who don't feel it necessary to deal with me.

And I'm not even trying to be harsh, but it's like this:

There are about 5,678,992 thoughts, fears, worries, and dreams swarming around my brain that I have never known about, that I have never had to harness, that I have never even realized were there, and I just feel like there is so much more to life than some of the silly, meaningless CRAP we are exposed to every day.  Why deal with it?

Why spread information about something you don't actually have accurate information about?

Why not do things you really want or need to do instead of doing something you're half-hearted about and are going to regret or be ashamed of later?

Why not go off by yourself if you alone are more enriching company than those around you?

Do things that matter to you.  Say things that mean something to you.  Be who you want to be.  Because in the long run that is all that matters.  If you feel like you need to impress someone in your life, why are they in your life?  The people who really care about YOU don't care about "you".

What I mean is, after living out of a suitcase for 4 months, if my friends actually care that my outfits seldom match and I don't take the time for makeup everyday, they're not my friends!  Because I know I have wonderful friends all over the world now who appreciate me for exactly who I am because when you are forced to live out of the confines of your comfort zone you are going to put your real, true self out there because you don't have time or energy to be someone you're not.  And when you only have 4 months to spend with someone, if they are really a caring soul, they care about who you are on the inside.  Happy or sad, elated or mad, dirty or clean, whatever.

However you are, that's how you should be.

I don't want this to come across cross (no pun intended) because I feel like most of my posting from abroad could be construed as negative.  I am very grateful to be home, and in the new, fresh, invigorating mindset that I am in.  But I am also very aware that if I'm not careful I could fall back into the ways of this world and that is a reality I refuse to accept.  Life is too short for petty.  Life is too short for meaningless.  Everything you do should be for the greater good of something, no matter what you believe in.  You owe it to God.  You owe it to yourself.