Sanity

Fewer than seven hours before I'm scheduled to leave home, yet again, I am awake and writing on blog. The leaving does not get easier, no matter how many times I leave.

Home is here, with my family and with old friends who know me as a person, not just as a strung-out graduate student. In the five days I have been here, I have felt more like myself than I have in the past few months. Everything here is easy. It fits. I fit.

I know that eventually, life will lead me back here, closer to home. For now, the journey is exciting and well worth it. Living away from home, Japan or Chicago, has been incredible. Facing the unknown has been terrifying and necessary. I am closer to becoming the person I want to be in life, and I realize that leaving the safety of home was an essential part of this.

But still it pains me to leave, yet again, the place where I feel most human and full.

Back to the grind first thing tomorrow, when the mundane demands of paper-writing and appointment-keeping suck me back in.

T minus 23 days until I'm home again.