I don't know how to be a friend. Especially not when we don't have compulsory schedules we all have to adhere to - college classes - which makes me scared of what might happen after all this ends. I don't know how to be a good friend. Because without constant contact, it is extremely hard for me to pick up a hello at you and run right through with it.
I last wrote in March, and a lot of have passed since then and now. I went on exchange to Italy, hated it then loved it then didn't want to leave, then left. Went home, started an internship, left with mixed feelings. Stayed at home for a whole month battling internal scars, and here I am back in my little northern snowball.
Perhaps I didn't think it possible to be anymore fickle than I was, but I sure am now, particularly when the timing for decision making is at its utmost importance. Additionally, the fear of failure and inferiority is weighing my whole soul down. Repeatedly my parents are telling me that the bar of expectations I have imagined them to set is exactly that - imaginary. For they couldn't care less what I do after this year, as long as I am happy. I find it hard to reconcile with that truth, given that if all I wanted to be was happy, my choices may have been very different from what they were. And even as the words roll through my throat and out of my tongue, I find it hard to digest that I can't.
My situation now is that postgraduate studies is in consideration, though I feel I would much prefer to take a year out instead of jumping straight into it. That in itself presents a problem as getting a job isn't the easiest thing to do here. Not when you have visa requirements and every other person is eyeing the same thing as you. It could have been easier if my hate for the cold overcame all other feelings, but my theory that it takes 2 years for me to start loving a place seems to be coming true as I mean less and less when I say things like "I hate Durham", because I really don't anymore. Not even the cold, and that is huge.
It is odd that I can be so attached to my own emotions and so emotionally unattached to the rest of the world. Why it feels so difficult to return a text message or some other form of social media connection is beyond me. Sometimes I feel like I could live my days alone in a hut on an island somewhere and be perfectly fine. And I know that I think too much but there is nothing I can do about it, it is inherently who I am to overthink things. But I am learning how to deal with my thoughts. For one, I have decided to cut the negativity. Success is yet to be near unity but I'm trying. I guess the next thing for me would be to change the way I view things.
It is funny how things seem so different with a deadline. I can practically count the number of weeks I have left here. I am torn between wanting a life back home and enjoying the way things are as I have come to love right here. And the possibilities stretch and endless road, I'm not sure whether I should keep poking my nose around things without direction or if I should start following some sort of structure towards the way I live.
But I will never be able to string words so beautifully as you do. And my fingers will never flow so effortlessly on the keyboard like you, all the fingerboard. My strokes will never be as divine as yours. My upper bound will always be less than yours. My hips a little wider, I'll never be taller, sharper, wittier... I can't beat myself up for things that are not worth feeling guilty over.
