:(

It is a strange time of year for this type of announcement, but I’m feeling quite homesick.  We here in South West Bulgaria are finding ourselves from amidst the snow and ice.  I can almost see the cherry blossoms coming out.  The trash fire haze is beginning to ebb leaving a clear view of the once fog- and smog-obstructed mountains.  But somehow I long to be home.  I’m not so much lonely.  And it’s not from boredom.  I just really want to be home.  I miss my family, not in an “I need my family to support me emotionally way,” but in an “I miss my family” kind of way.  There is a small hint of regret for all the things I am missing at home.  I missed my brother’s high school graduation.  I missed seeing him finish his first triathlon.  I will miss my sister’s last two years of high school.  I won’t be able to help her through all the drama that is your senior year.  I won’t get to see her off to her senior prom.  I will miss her high school graduation as well.  

I think part of it has to do with that feeling of being in a place where you know you are so deeply and unequivocally loved.  I know that some of the relationships I have made in the Peace Corps are strong like family.  I look at some of these people as my brothers and sisters.  I can’t imagine my life without them.  But they don’t live with me everyday.  The best I can get is a little chatche, a few lines on the IM.  I miss coming home to something besides the residue of myself.  Everything in my flat smells of me or the rot that I have left behind.  Every trinket was given to me, and anything not given to me was bought by me.  I want other people’s things.  I want to see someone else’s mess.  Is that strange?  Maybe it is loneliness after all.  I just miss something other, someone else.  I miss my doggie.  I miss being able to relish the hour or two of quiet time when the house was abandoned, knowing that I would be disturbed by the chaos of our 8 living bodies coexisting under one roof.  I miss feeling sad and saying, “mommy hold you” and knowing that while nothing was fixed, I was loved and comforted – that someone else saw the pain on my face, felt the ache in my muscles, and hurt with me.  

Here I am, with nothing broken, but feeling so homesick.  Actually, I’m probably at the most emotionally stable place I’ve been since I got to this country.  Perhaps I just have nothing else to worry about, but I just can’t stop thinking about home.