Homesick!
Yup, that's right. Homesickness hit this weekend. I think it was because I was away from my home away from home and hit with a real dose of foreign touristy stuff. But all day yesterday and today, I've been feeling like absolute shite, and wishing I could just pick up and go back home. Don't get me wrong. I'm enjoying my program. I'm well aware that this is the opportunity of a lifetime and that I'll be glad I've done it when I'm done... but right now I would kill for an electrical socket that looks like the ones back home... I would kill to see French on the label of my Canada Dry (which, yes, they do sell here!) Ginger Ale... I would kill to run grab a cup of coffee at the 24 hour Tim's... and the list goes on.

I generally pride myself on being one of the least emotional, not-so-homesick people in a group, but I'm alone here, mostly, and it's been two months - the longest I've ever gone without seeing someone from a 'previous life' - friends/family - has been a week or two, and the longest I've ever been out of Canada was a month.

So I spent most of yesterday evening bawling. I'm serious. I even went to class today, and I thought I'd done a pretty good job of covering up - although my nose is red because I have a cold and have blown my nose raw (stupid Kleenex) - and one of my classmates told me I looked... what was the word she used... draggy... in the sense of slow, lethargic, tired. Yup. That'd be me. Sniffly to begin with, so luckily I was able to hide most of my in-class sniffles with tissues, leaving my classmates to assume that it was just the cold (I was only about to cry once in class, and I managed to avoid it with only a slight watering of the eyes).

I want to blame it on the fact that I've cut my meds (for those of you who don't already know this, I suffer from borderline clinical depression and have been on meds for 3.5 years now) - but the cut was towards the beginning of the summer and things are only getting bad now. So, nope, it's just me being 'weak' (in my own personal estimation*) and finally succumbing to what I was hoping I'd manage to avoid. I actually got to the point yesterday where I started seriously looking for jobs in Canada because I didn't want to come back so badly. But thanks to the lovely ladies of an internet community to which I belong, I've had some moral support and am feeling slightly better - and it's less than 20 days now until I fly home! And god only knows, by the end of my couple of weeks at home, I'll probably be ready to come back here to England.

*This is generally why I don't see counselors. I hate admitting that I'm anything less than strong, stable and good to go. So I guess this blog is sort of a quasi-counselor vent session-type thing.

Sorry to leave you all on such a negative note, but hopefully I'll have good things to write in the near future.
1 Response
  1. Kate,

    I am so sorry that I was busy when you were feeling low. I hope that you hang in there. I know how it feels sometimes to be homesick. I live in Oklahoma and my mom lives in Los Angeles. She had surgery this week and all of the sudden I realized how far away that can be. I hope that your week is looking better now, and I am proud of your knitting project from above. How did you get started?