Packing and repacking

After 4 months stocked full of valuable experiences, both good and bad, the journey is coming to an early end. Visa problems, broken expectations, and the great weighing process has brought me to a decision I never would have seen coming - the decision to leave.

I'm struggling with what this all means on so many different levels, but I know in my heart that I am doing the best I can and making difficult decisions in hopes of growing.

And so, here I go packing up 4 months - a whole semester's worth- of my life here and I can't help but being reminded of the fact that I have done this so many times in the past 3 years. I feel like my life is constantly being packed and unpacked. And strangely enough, I'm kind of getting sick of it and I find myself craving some sense of permanence in my seemingly temporal life.

As a kid I lived out of suitcases and duffle bags. Mom's house this weekend, Dad's house next. Most of the time now I don't even bother to unpack. Pulling neatly folded clothes out of drawers is stranger than shaking out the wrinkles while trying to piece outfits together from an incomplete wardrobe. But none of this has ever really bothered me before. Afterall, 13 years is far longer than it takes to become accustomed to most things in life.

But for whatever reason, I feel like I kind of want to move onto the next phase of my life. Where I can actually establish my own life and feel like I have a chance to settle rather than temporarily occupy a certain space. Unfortunately, I have 2.5 months of bouncing between homes in Rochester, and at least one more year of school left to look forward to where I will continue to be packing and unpacking the bits and pieces of my life.