It is the weekend after spending a month with my sweetheart and before going back to college, a time in my life that always seems to be some sort of delicious purgatory spent at home. I mean this word in the best possible sense; I love my parents dearly and don't appreciate their company enough, and my mom's cooking is enough to make any distance worth traveling. But there is something that tugs strongly at my soul, enough to create feelings of unease, loneliness, and melancholy in this house.
First, I find myself not wanting to do anything. Understandably so -- it is hard whenever we go back to being a long-distance relationship after being comfortably warm and familiar with each other's presence. Reading seemed like a great escape for a while, until my parents came in and roused my fragile state. I couldn't help it. Talking about things we could do together as a family made me want to curl up in my mom's arms and cry. I missed N, but at the same time missed spending lots of time with my family. One weekend, especially a purgatory one, is not enough.
Let me explain what exactly I mean by "purgatory" in this sense. Home has become a sort of transient place between college and breaks, somewhere I go to rest and eat and spend time with family before moving off somewhere else for vacation. A waystation. My productivity shoots way down because I feel that a couple of days is not enough to build up momentum for work. As a result, the entire next week that I have planned out for school looks and feels like ashes and dust. Not only that, but the few days before and after I see N can be some of the hardest days, especially if I don't keep myself busy. It feels like a little bit of my soul is shaded. I am also feeling a greater urge to be independent from my parents, yet at the same time I still feel like a child. What I have then are moments at home that I no longer consider one of my prime natural environments, somewhere I can come to rest, but not feel alive, somewhere I long for, but cannot stay forever. I miss being home even though I am home.
When unproductive, the next logical thing to try was to pack. Organizing things always makes me feel better. I have always been vaguely aware of how much stuff this house holds from my younger years. Today, it astounded me and caused me to stress out a little. There were a lot of things that could be sold at school; old clothes and games can easily find better homes, but the more I think about it, the more I know I won't make the time to put these items up for sale. We can also donate, recycle, or reuse some as gifts.
The sheer materialism from my middle and high school years was overwhelming. It forced me to consider what trinkets I was spending my money on these days, and what I could do to clean out the old stuff. I think the best plan, although it may irk me now, is to wait until the summer before going to grad school to sort it out. There were so many pretty and shiny things that made me happy, but years, even just months, down the road, they are forgotten, only useful as a reminder of how wasteful I was and how to better spend my money.
Despite all of this, I can't help but feel optimistic. I strongly believe that I am exactly where I should be and there will be a time and place for everything. I also know that these slumps never last long, and I always emerge from them more appreciative of the more permanent things in my life.
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