Didn't think it would come so soon

So I made my friends stop their productive lives to go waste time with me tonight. I said I felt socially deprived and knew that this week would be hectic or I would be out of town for most of it, so I wanted to just chill before it got too crazy. Lies. I'm such a liar. But I was fooling myself at first. I really didn't know why I felt so needy, so those are the reasons I came up with. Now I think I figured it out. And I'm getting it out of the way before it gets worse. I would've put it off, denied it, buried it, tried to forget it, and then fallen apart. I've heard that that's not exactly healthy, so I guess I've brought myself here.. where I told you I would do this. I'm dealing with crap, and here it goes.

The crap I talked about at the beginning. Not going home. I think it started when this semester started taking it's toll on me. I have realized that my classes are more, harder, and longer this semester. I'm doing more outside of class, and more things are going wrong with my body than I can count, and though I'm learning how to balance it, it won't ever stop being tiring. And it's wearing me out, it's taking every ounce of energy and at the end of the day I feel so empty of any desire to move. I don't feel like I have energy at the end of the day to pray, and I thank God that the Spirit intercedes for me when I can't, but I'm not okay feeling that way everyday. So that started this dealing with round. I'm just tired, and that is heavy on me emotionally. Second, I haven't talked to my parents, really talked to them in too long. I've had little conversations on skype recently, but I haven't really just sat down and talked to them. I honestly don't even need to talk to them. I wish I could just have my skype video open to my dad reading the newspaper and I could sit at my desk and work on something and just know that he's there, a continent away, but that I can talk to him. I want to come in from class and stand beside my mother in the kitchen and just talk. So I miss my parents, I miss talking to them. It's not like I sit in my room with all this time and just forget to get on skype.. I never have more than an hour, if that, to sit and talk to them, without having to be somewhere soon after. My schedule is killing me, and it's not even March yet.

I've been trying to swim as much as possible recently. I love swimming, I love the feeling of sore arms and worn muscles, I love water. But I think I've been trying to swim so much because I'm just trying to escape that hectic schedule I've run into. I think I've been trying to get away from anything else that would trigger my homesick heart and swimming puts my in a place where I don't have to think. I swim, my body goes into automatic, and when I realize it, I'm going as fast as my weak body will let me along the lanes and the life guard is looking at me like I'm crazy because I look like an absolute idiot. But swimming is something that doesn't connect back to Colombia with memories, but I think I feel more at home when I swim. I swam some with my mom in Colombia, even some at Union when we spent a year in Jackson for furlough. It reminds me of mom, but it doesn't trigger sadness. It let's me escape all of that and just swim. It let's me be, let's me not think, not process, just put it off, let it out with the intensity of my strokes and the energy I'm putting into moving.

I've skyped a few friends from back home recently, and I realized how long it had been since I talked to them when I had to generalize something that had happened a month before. These are my two best friends, and I felt distance between us, and I'm not just talking about physical. I cannot stand that. This is what I fear most about not being home-- losing my friendships, letting them fade. It kills me that I don't feel like my schedule allows time for me to sit and just talk with my best friends as if we were sitting together on the same couch, because it doesn't even give me that time for my parents. I miss them and our stupid bickering over my over-analyzing, and their fact-of-life statements and everything else. I feel like I'm missing out on so much of their lives, and I hate it. I absolutely hate it.

"Everyone" went home this weekend, or at least that's what I've been hearing. I am seriously so happy for the people that spent a great weekend at home with their families, but I wish I could say the same. Going home for the weekend will never be an option, and that just comes with the missionary kid life, and I'm over it, but it's just a crappy reminder when everyone else does go home for the weekend. When a friend goes home to be with his mother before and after surgery to visit and spend time with her, and my family goes through so much medical crap and I never have that option, it feels like a slap in the face "good for them, but never for you Sierra.. hope nothing ever goes seriously wrong with one of your parents.. because you're too far to ever get there in time." I know that seems a little dramatic, but honestly, my family has so many medical problems, its a scary possibility.

Another, though I keep telling myself that December will be here soon enough, I know it won't. I know it will take a lifetime and a half before I'm back in Colombia. One of my friends who lives here has the chance to go down for a week next week to help out on a missions trip, and I am so happy that she gets to go for even just a week, but I am so jealous. She tells me I can't say it'll be December before I'm home, because that's what she thought and all of a sudden she'll be there next week. But she's got some ridiculous connections and sketchy ways about getting places (totally joking, dear) and I just don't have those chance to go home like she does. People are still surprised that it will be that long before I'm home, and I just shrug it off with "I've got to work this summer so that I can be there for Christmas" but every time it comes up, I feel it. Somewhere inside it hurts, and sometimes I don't realize it, because I numb it, I phase it out and act as if it's okay. But it's not, and so it builds up to nights like tonight. My Monday schedule killed me and it didn't help that we talked about Colombia for a good 15 minutes in my night class. Of course most of it was about drugs and violence, but any other small thing tugged at my heart. I was so excited to be talking about Colombia, but it was killing me inside. So when my day ended at 10, I didn't want to sit in my room and ignore it. I wanted something familiar-- I wanted people who didn't have to talk about anything that would get my heart going but who just being around could ease me, get my mind off of it. They didn't know I lied to them, they didn't know I would come home and get slapped in the face with a wave of emotion and cry, they didn't know how crappy I felt inside, how bad I just want to be home, but they didn't have to. Of course they know now, because they have no lives and read about my lame life, but that's okay. I said I would deal on here.. and I believe this is the first real "dealing" I've done in a while. It's not been to this extent since January. I didn't think it would take this long, but again, I didn't think it would come so soon.

and I can't stand the thought of summer coming. I love summer in all the sunshine, freedom, and all that jazz. But I pray to God, I pray that I am too busy to think about how much I miss home, because at that point I'll have been away from home longer than ever before and that's just not cool.