Homesickness at Home

"It's a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what's changed is you." -F. Scott Fitzgerald


    
     I know no one said it would be easy, but I also don't recall anyone saying it would be this hard. Today I found myself stuck in a rut. It's so difficult because my body's here, but my head and heart are in New Orleans. Today I had an attention span the size of a peanut and sitting here right now I am still unable to self motivate enough to even pick up the unfriendly looking homework. No matter what I was doing today, I could not keep my focus on anything for more than 5 seconds. So here I am, staring at my blinking cursor and the Google homepage attempting to start a 7 page research paper on the cult of domesticity at 7 in the morning, but all I can think about is how I would much rather be watching the sunrise in New Orleans and eating breakfast with 48 other people. Here I am forgetting every Spanish vocabulary word I've ever known apparently, but I'd much rather be starting off my day at a worksite or even learning ladder safety from Twiggy and Darrell (yeah, I'm that desperate...UM). Here I am completely missing every entrance and dynamic marking in wind symphony, but I'd much rather be enjoying my satisfying lunch break in the warm sun. And here I am, getting off the bus to go home. An extremely peculiar thing for me to do seeing as it is Monday, and for the past 10 months, 2:00 to 3:30 every Monday has been a special time slot reserved for NOLA meetings and nothing else. I would much rather be at a meeting. Or on the balcony. Or around the fire at reflection. As awful as it sounds, I would much rather be there than here (sorry mom).
      
"If you want to know where your heart lies, look to where your mind goes when it wanders."




     I want to write very plainly about this so that anyone reading who was not on the trip can get a slight understanding for what I'm saying and might even be comforted by the honesty. Before this trip when NOLA veterans would speak of New Orleans being their 'home away from home', I told myself that was...bologna...for lack of a better word (mom's probably reading this, gotta have censorship). The concept of a place feeling like home after only 8 days seemed strange and unfeasible to me. I was mistaken. After just a few days down in New Orleans you get into a routine that you become comfortable with, both mentally and physically you start to conform to this routine so that it becomes second nature and hard to break. After having such a tough time readjusting to "reality" at school today, I've started to think: how odd that I can feel so misplaced in the only place I've ever known as home, yet in New Orleans I felt a sense of comfort and belonging even after only a handful of days.


~Dominique