i am still trying to focus on falling back into life here. reverse culture shock is thousands more difficult than the initial change. strange that it is so trying to find a place i belong in my own home. this isn't as hard as the first return last spring, but it certainly hasn't been easy. living with the idea that i really don't know when or if i'll return again is undeniable and makes everything hard to be worth it at all. i just keep telling myself, "only one year and a half, and you'll never have to come back," but it's not doing much so far. it's not as easy as it seems to just get up and go-quite the contrary to how i've been living my life the past year. but after college, then what? in an ideal world, i'd take a year off just to learn spanish in spain, be with my best friends, and eat tortilla and drink sangria and expand a bit. you know. but is that so realistic? i don't know. would it be worth it? certainly so.
now i'm just immersed in studying, which currently happens to be neuroscience. which i'm also currently avoiding. the thing about school is, more often than not, i can't seem to find the purpose in what i'm doing. i'm not actively learning anything worthwhile. all of this is shit. i learned more in six months of partying in a foreign country about life and myself than i probably ever will in that short of a time span again. especially at university. none of this matters to me at all and it's part of the reason i'm quite unhappy here.
but i am happy. there are just things. you know. like the distance that grows between people. how there's not a real way out of here, at least not for another year. saying bye and not knowing when i'll be able to say hello again. forgetting people's faces, voices.
the one year anniversary mark has really hit me hard. this wasn't something i anticipated but it's certainly true. i still can't believe it's been more than a year. i am so scared i'm forgetting everything. i have nothing else to say. i suppose my head will always be in stockholm eating dinner around a table with four spaniards who argue like it's poetry. shopping in drottninggatan. hearing årstaberg and nästa on the metro. partying with thirty people from so many different places. sledding down the björnkulla hills in the nighttime. naked saunas. hookah in my bedroom and the xx. walking back at five in the morning with everyone, in knee deep snow, sun just rising, possibly still drunk. i'm forgetting everything. but i guess mostly sharing all of these experiences with such beautiful people. i still can't get over it. and knowing i was living the best six months of my life thus far just one year ago is overwhelming; it's so far away and it's never, ever, ever, ever coming back no matter how much i want it.
so for now, i have a new pup. i speak spanish with him because he listens and he doesn't laugh at me. but he also doesn't know if i'm making a mistake so he isn't much of a help in that aspect. also, i suppose the most exciting thing on my camera (since the past month) is this photo of the veins in my mouth. actually cool
weekends are full of converse shoes (and conversation), bottles of wine, running through yard sprinklers, chinese delivery, table dancing, sofa sinking
so to come in this month: the national, neutral milk hotel, midterms, and halloween. i have no time, my days are scheduled by the minute, but i still find time to run (i've been running a lot and i feel really well!) and to be with jesse in the evenings. when he's gone next semester i suppose it will be yet another shock entirely. and i suppose that's almost everything. reed before the wind lives on, while mighty oaks do fall
