Cracked-Heal

So last night Kate Maxwell was visiting because she is driving to Princeton with Bianca, and I discovered that I was homesick. I also discovered that retrospectively I have been homesick before and hadn't even realized it. When I was on Deputation in Croatia I got homesick right about a month into the trip. It is sort of comforting and sort of not comforting to recognize the pattern. You see, I think that I go through stages whenever I arrive at a new place. First I am in input mode. Where I am friendly but quiet as I try to get a sense of what things are like here. Throughout all of this time I am analyzing what is happening, which really means that I am being critical and over-thinking things. Then after I have done that for about a month... throughout which I have attempted to stay incredibly positive and appreciate the good things in the new place that I am at. I realize that I have been ignoring and not fully recognizing how bothered I am by the crappy, annoying, bad things that have been sprinkled in the middle. At this point I get broken. 

I don't say broken lightly. This is the problem with not taking both things at once I suppose. I have used up all my resilience in the first month and by the end of it I feel incredibly raw. It is like a cracked heel... everything is fine until the skin breaks and then you realize it has been wearing down for a while and now it is going to take a time to heal. 

Yesterday I cracked when I started talking to Kate. I am house sitting and she came and spent the night with me while Bianca stayed at the Griffice's. She was asking me how Texas was going, and despite wanting to sing its praises that is not where I am at right now. Right now I am at the stage where I really wish that people around me would get me without anything else. I think this is a side effect of living in one place all your life and then moving to a place that could not be more opposite. I see these opposite things and they are wrong to me. But more importantly I see these opposite things and I start to feel opposite.

So at this point, all the the people here understand about me is that I am quiet and friendly. But because I put up a wall, they don't know my opinions, my sense of humor, my fears, or that I desperately need someone that I am just myself with. And I because of all my analysis, have convinced myself that if I do show people that they just won't get me. 

But from the beginning to the end this is my problem. I am the person that is doing the judging and I am the person that doesn't let them get to know me. So at this point I feel somewhat ready to change these things, but unfortunately I think it is going to express itself by me crying in front of someone who is practically a stranger. And I am not a public crier. But at this point I don't think holding it in is an option anymore.