For the first time in a very long time, I was glad to go home.
Many things have happened this year that have left me feeling quite unsettled, not secure. A few months back, someone repeatedly tried to break into my mother's house. They tried again this week, cutting out parts of our front screen. And of course, my recent purse-napping has added to my unease. I've felt so small, and I've been fretting constantly. I've been in a state of perpetual nervousness mixed with the dread that one feels when they expect the sky to fall in on their heads. Sometimes I hate solitude, as much as I need it to have my space. Sometimes the campus feels too empty, and I feel all alone. I'm not usually like this.
Being home was really nice. I felt safe. My parents have been inexplicably warm lately. I have a feeling of family, and it's strange but wonderful. I needed to go home. I needed to sleep in my own bed with my cats and make faces at my brother and gossip with my mother. Andrea has been changing lately. She's still by all accounts a complete ditz with an attitude, but last night, she started to quote the fourteenth amendment to me. She wrote our senators seven times about making civil unions legal, and she saved all of their responses. She got sent to the office for taking up for the sole gay boy in her high school classroom. She's also going throught that awkward sexual phase that fourteen year olds go through where they're curious about sex but not informed enough or emotionally ready for it. We had a four hour conversation last night that only sisters can have, because she and my mom are even further apart than I was at her age. I mean, she's still Andi, and she still rolls her eyes and spends 23.45 hours per day on the phone, but she seems to be thinking now. This is a definite sign of hope.
I dyed my mom's hair today, and my sister's, and we spent two hours in a high school auditorium making fun of my brother as he got his senior portraits done. My mother made me keel over by actually using "metrosexual" in a sentence, and we made meals and we talked about my future. We felt together. And it's something that I haven't had in so long that I'd forgotten to miss it. I wanted to stay. I didn't want to come home to a tomb-like campus, not after the last few days. Things will go back to normal tomorrow, I suppose, but I'm glad that I had today.
Many things have happened this year that have left me feeling quite unsettled, not secure. A few months back, someone repeatedly tried to break into my mother's house. They tried again this week, cutting out parts of our front screen. And of course, my recent purse-napping has added to my unease. I've felt so small, and I've been fretting constantly. I've been in a state of perpetual nervousness mixed with the dread that one feels when they expect the sky to fall in on their heads. Sometimes I hate solitude, as much as I need it to have my space. Sometimes the campus feels too empty, and I feel all alone. I'm not usually like this.
Being home was really nice. I felt safe. My parents have been inexplicably warm lately. I have a feeling of family, and it's strange but wonderful. I needed to go home. I needed to sleep in my own bed with my cats and make faces at my brother and gossip with my mother. Andrea has been changing lately. She's still by all accounts a complete ditz with an attitude, but last night, she started to quote the fourteenth amendment to me. She wrote our senators seven times about making civil unions legal, and she saved all of their responses. She got sent to the office for taking up for the sole gay boy in her high school classroom. She's also going throught that awkward sexual phase that fourteen year olds go through where they're curious about sex but not informed enough or emotionally ready for it. We had a four hour conversation last night that only sisters can have, because she and my mom are even further apart than I was at her age. I mean, she's still Andi, and she still rolls her eyes and spends 23.45 hours per day on the phone, but she seems to be thinking now. This is a definite sign of hope.
I dyed my mom's hair today, and my sister's, and we spent two hours in a high school auditorium making fun of my brother as he got his senior portraits done. My mother made me keel over by actually using "metrosexual" in a sentence, and we made meals and we talked about my future. We felt together. And it's something that I haven't had in so long that I'd forgotten to miss it. I wanted to stay. I didn't want to come home to a tomb-like campus, not after the last few days. Things will go back to normal tomorrow, I suppose, but I'm glad that I had today.