A hard day's night

Some days your life does not seem your own. None of your clothes are what you'd pick to wear. Nothing in your apartment seems like it should belong to you. The food in the fridge seems like it was picked for another girl's palate. The music you own seems like it's almost right. Your friends seem like obligatory postcards instead of the warm, inspiring letters they usually are. Some days everything is...off.

Today, if you couldn't guess, is one of those days. A day when nothing really seems funny or light and everything conveys meaning to your subconscious in a way your self-respecting conscious mind says "no, seriously...where'd you get that?!" There's a storm that keeps passing over town. It rumbles and looks like it's about to pour but never does. Today's sort of like that. I wish it would just storm like hell or pass, but instead everything just kind of lingers and leaves me waiting for the verdict. That's what's driving me mad about today. I feel like it's a waiting day, that there are outcomes out of my control that could seriously impact my life and I can't do much about them.

I've never been a bystander in my own life - I've done all I could to not be that. I've made choices and sacrifices that, in the end, I seriously doubted or even regretted but I always knew they were mine. There's something about Peace Corps that makes you feel like you become just that - a bystander. You're given a town, a job and an apartment. Your job? Stay. It's like I left the country and became a dog. I'd love to be in a car right now driving the country roads with some music turned up loud enough for it to take over my head. But I can't drive here. I'd love to be someplace better, fuller. I'd love for my friends to not all be hours away. But reality is something different. Something so much different. Too much different.

I was listening to Billy Joel (see, I told you my music selection was off - I sunk to Billy Joel!) earlier. When you're from New York, one of the worst songs to hear on a hard day is "New York State of Mind". It somehow captures how you are feeling and makes you want to run to the nearest airport. I wonder why I am here. Why I stay. Why I know I have talents and skills that would get me a job almost anywhere I wanted and yet I don't go. I wonder how long it would take to pack all this stuff. How much would I want to take anyway? I wonder how many people would care; how long it would take people to notice if I didn't tell them. I wonder in 5 years if I'd regret staying or leaving more.

I just want answers. And to have my life stop feeling so damn affected by external changes. I want to stop feeling like a basketcase all the time. I was to stop feeling like an egg, kept together only by a thin shell - one that with the smallest crack sends me uncontrollably splattered all over the place. I want to stop feeling so alone.

The rain's started, which means the internet will go soon. Be careful what you wish for.