This is only the second night that I’ve been home since finishing up with school, and I can already tell that it’s going to be a long couple of months. It’s not that I’m counting down the days until I leave for China, and it’s certainly not the case that I dislike being at home. I am very thankful to have a home to come to and a place to rest and relax before embarking on the next big path in my life. However, being at home can be tough, and for me it takes a lot of mental preparation. There are just so many memories from so many years of living here, and after being away for a while, the memories just seem to come flooding back, demanding attention. It feels as if I must remember each memory as it was and store it away again, even with memories that I’ve done this with dozens of times already. Coming home, for me, often means confronting the past and things that I thought I’d left behind. Truthfully, I’m beginning to wonder if this ever ends. Certainly all of the memories aren’t bad. Most of them are wonderful, and I love and cherish them. I’d just like to come home once in a while without feeling emotionally bombarded by all of the memories. It’s really hard to explain, and I don’t feel like I’m doing a great job at all, but maybe you understand.
The problem with thinking about all the things that happened here when I was in high school and middle school is that these memories are endless and they keep me up at night. I’m not sure why they all come flooding back like this or why I feel that each memory requires extra time, thought, and attention. That’s just the way it seems to go. After all, I spent 7 years of my life in this very bedroom at night replaying the day, cataloguing memories, and praying and preparing for the next day. I guess it’s just a habit, but it’s gotten so bad that oftentimes I have to sleep on the couch (which is rather comfy, thank goodness) or in the guest bedroom just to slow down my thoughts and fall asleep at a decent hour. Well, it probably also doesn’t help that I don’t really have an agenda here. I’m not super busy making more memories, so I guess it makes sense that my mind defaults to the old ones. I have a tendency to spend way too much time in the past, so I’m going to have to find a way to focus more on the future and get some rest!
Thanks for reading my random rants. Hopefully I can catch a few hours of sleep now that I’ve vented for a bit.
a thousand new paths 