First semester of senior year is long gone, Christmas is past, and now in a few days I’ll return to Dublin for a good long winter break.

Some of my friends have already been back and said it wasn’t very nostalgic — too soon, perhaps, to really mean anything yet.  I don’t know if I’m looking for nostalgia.  It’s not like going back to high school and saying, “Oh, remember sitting here at lunch?  And you sat there, and she sat there, and I always ate a peanut butter sandwich and Yoo-hoo.”  I won’t be saying, “Aw, I loved coming here.”  It’ll be, “I love coming here.  Is there anywhere else we can go?”

Friends said crossing the Liffey and cutting through Trinity didn’t feel like memory lane, just another day in Dublin.  This disappointed them, but it’s what I want.  I want the next few weeks to be like I never left.  And before I left, I was just living — not thinking about what I would think of things later, but just doing things.  I want to constantly recreate what the city means to me, just like any other day.  I want to hit the old haunts at some point, soak in the familiarity of going down the street for a pint just because, dancing to indie and ironic music at Doyle’s, and dozing off in a Luas seat, but I also want to check out restaurants I haven’t noticed before, explore the outlying districts, and find Iveagh Gardens once and for all.  I’ve spent the last semester staring at my ceiling thinking of everything that happened last year.  It’s high time to paper over old memories with new ones.

It’s a city I know very well, with lots of corners I don’t know at all.  Sorry, Boston, but you’re a city I’ll never know.  You and I are long-standing acquaintances who will never quite get each other.  I can’t learn you, your infrastructure, or the things that matter to you, and you’ll never try with me.  This other place that I’m heading back to, this little city that quietly builds and builds, is calling me back.  It was a pit stop for many, and while it may not be where I’ll forever rest my head, for now it’s where I’ll keep on living.

And in the summer, when I’m through with college and stepping into the first day of the rest of my life, it’s where I’ll go.

I just spent the weekend with the love of my life.  He makes autumn a beautiful season for me.

It’s that time of year, when my generally amazing immune system (for normal diseases, I mean; the bizarre “only on House” types of reactions I’ve got covered) screeches to a halt as it gets a little bit colder, because even though I think I look pretty good when the cord jacket gets its seasonal debut, my body seems to REALLY HATE SWEATER WEATHER.

Well, like clockwork I’ve been struck with the same monster cold everyone else has.  I was pretty convinced it was swine flu this morning, what with the trembling and the fair-maiden weakness and the vomit, but now I don’t think it is.  I think I’ve just got the exact same thing I get every year, the exact same thing the girls in my house have had for weeks.

It’s pretty suck timing, as my boyfriend is currently on a plane home and I was spread-eagled on my bed wishing for death when he left.  I’ll need to get through another month now, and at the moment I feel okay.  I’m snuggled in my jammies in my bed, breathing fine through one nostril, feeling totally not guilty about spending every weekend at home.  I’m on a bubble of love that must not pop any time soon.

Unfortunately, I’ve been experiencing heightened depression lately.  It’s nothing I want to go into here or now, but suffice it to say that my good moods are very easily crushed by bad thoughts.  I’m back in therapy for an indefinite amount of time while I try to figure out how I can summon the elation of a happy memory the way I seem to be able to summon the misery of a bad one.

So, after that monster check list of my hopes and dreams, I’ve thought of a few things to put on a new one.  If I’m bored one day I might make it into a sidebar.  And I’m bored a lot.

• Do yoga regularly. I spent $20 on a mat so I better keep this up.  My plan is Thursdays at 12:45, between classes, and then on my own time using a video Podcast.  This will hopefully allow me to calm my mind and my body, because both of them are reacting as though I just came back from ten years trapped in the space/time continuum rather than one year in Europe.
• Knit or crochet again. I have a project in mind, and I’m once again enthralled by the idea of sitting in my pajamas watching movies on my computer while knitting a scarf.  And this time I have no one to come into my room on a weekend night and imply that I am a gigantic loser for not going out.
• Make jewelry. I’ve made a few pieces that I really quite like.  None of them are terribly complicated but that’s because that’s not the sort of jewelry I like.  Kage saw some and said they were good, and I would like to continue and make some monay.  I’ll do a “ask me to make you something” post soon, so start thinking now if you need a gift or would like something nice for yourself.

I got halfway through a post of misery last week when I forced myself to stop it, stop it now.  I’m not telling myself to get over it, because that’s just about the worst piece of “advice” anyone can give.  I’m saying find a way around it.  It hurts and it sucks and it’s not what you want, and complaining and whining can feel so good sometimes, and yes, these two weeks have felt like a lifetime, but allow the year to pick up some steam and before you know it it’ll be gone and you can do whatever you want.

That being said, I’ve gotten through the past two weeks of being back home better than expected.  I’ve hated it so strongly at some points, but also found myself not thinking twice about waking up in my bed with a cat I haven’t seen since Christmas.  Moving into my new house at college was pretty traumatizing, recalling the horror of past move-ins, but I’m getting used to the place as I always do.  I still don’t love my college, but I start classes again tomorrow which should keep my mind occupied.

I’m sure I’ve written at length about the exact same anxieties every fall.  It is a little bit different this time, though, with the added anxiety of an ocean.  But even that will be treated soon.  Looking ahead to Thursday with a fluttering heart.

After 285 days since arriving here in Ireland (that’s 9 months, 12 days) (40 weeks) (6840 hours) (410,400 minutes) (right I’ll stop), I’ve finally started to feel the slightest but genuine inklings of homesickness.

There is absolutely no negative reason for this.  I love where I am and what I’m doing, and I’m going to reiterate this for the next paragraph so as to leave no doubt it anyone’s mind: I’m 1000% happy.  I’m in a crazy cool job, a crazy cool relationship, have left my name imprinted on people all around this city, and I still get to relax most of the time.  I’ve had some rough moments since being here, and for a good chunk of time no matter how wonderful things were I would still break down into an inexplicable mound of weepiness over just about everything, but mainly things I couldn’t control.  But I’ve been talking out loud a lot since then, getting things straight, and I just… well, I don’t want to say I couldn’t be happier because I’m always a little happier everyday, but if I didn’t get any happier than this, no one would be able to say I took anything for granted.

But since I’ve been forced to consider the reality of moving back to Boston and actually living there for a year or a more, the more I’ve willingly and inadvertently thought about it.  For a while, I wouldn’t even think of it: it was a wretched thing I wanted no part of and everyone should have just LEFT ME ALONE AND LET ME BE HAPPY AT THIS MOMENT.  So they did, they cooled down the pressure for a while, and on my own I drifted back towards the notion of having to return.  I’m finally buckling down and getting in contact about places to live, looking into jobs, planning my budget.  I’ve forced myself to fully accept the fact that yes, I must go back, and I must find things to like about it because otherwise I’ll die of hateonBCitis.

So I’m reminding myself of what I like about living in America.  I like going home on weekends and watching TV with my dad, chattering nonsense with my mom, cuddling with my cats, and whispering things in my dog’s big ears.  I like BC in the nice weather and walking back from classes.  I like trudging through a book, hating every word of it, and then still having the satisfying feeling of having read something.  I like Water St. Cafe.  I like Target.  I like being able to afford things, and not having to worry about an exchange rate.  I have a new appreciation for the towns and states around me I never considered before.

My Someone and I are planning when we will be able to visit each other and when I am thinking positively like this I know we are going to make it work, because we are both too amazing and smart to ever let something as stupid and insignificant as an ocean get in the way.  But when I am thinking negatively, such as I did this weekend, good God, ya’ll.  How can I do this!  When things are so sunny and perfect even in this flawed and rainy country, how can I just pack up and go?  I know exactly what I’m going to think when I’m sitting on the flight back home in August: “That was it.  It’s over.”  All weekend, I just kept thinking about how it would be over soon, how I would come back to America and be forgotten in Ireland, and my stories would grow tired after a while, and I would get dumped because of the distance, and then I would officially be a nobody everywhere.

Fortunately, although these awful, awful feelings nagged at me for days, after much coaxing and crying, I am back to being positive.  I am back to being proudly, profoundly in love with my Someone and my adopted country and my year and my future.  Not only am I not a nobody anywhere, I am a somebody all over.

I’m back in the States for the weekend, and already it feels like the past two weeks just didn’t happen.  It seemed to slip away almost immediately.  When we drove away from the airport I thought, “Hm.  This is driving on the right side of the road,” and just like that, it was like I’d never seen anyone drive on the left.  When I opened my wallet to pay for a drink and found only Euros, I thought, “Oh that’s right, I only use my debit card because it helps me keep better track of my money,” and by the end of my shopping spree I knew exactly how much I’d spent and how much I had left.

There are some things I like about being back.  For one, the reason, aka the wedding.  Also how warm it is here, and how I could take my jacket and scarf off and drive with my windows all the way down.  The prices that don’t give me heart attacks because I don’t have to bother with mental Euro conversions.  I like the sound of the Boston accent because it makes me feel less obviously American, and simply more at home.  (By contrast, whenever it comes time for me to say something Irish like “Cheers!” or “Grand!” I get too nervous, and what comes out sounds more American than anything I would ever say at home, something like, “Awesome, that’s terrific, thanks a bunch!  Bye bye now!”)  My pets are warm and act like they missed me, and this morning I woke up with Ninja Bits somehow completely under my head.  H&M was rocking SO MUCH AWESOME STUFF, and I bought a lot of cute cold weather clothes.

And then there are the things I haven’t missed.  The impossibility of scheduling and whiny employees has grown exponetially worse at work.  The confused mewling of my mentally ailing pets who can’t seem to remember what they just did or where they just were or why they came in here.  The fact that there was a pile of shredded, important papers in the middle of my room, courtesy of Fat Cat, did not say good night to me.  Being told what to do, no matter how small it is, no matter if it’s just to move my shoes.  Bizarre family issues that I don’t really know how to talk about and should by no means discuss here.

What I miss from Dublin, I’m not sure yet.  Not the good times, necessarily, as I’ve still only been out once and I’ve mostly just slummed it in my room.  I don’t have any tight friends yet, and no clubs have started.  I guess it’s just the possibility that’s there.  There’s so much that I’m right on the brink of doing–getting a job, becoming the over-achiever again, writing for the Trinity News and going on photography trips, getting close with new people, breaking into the nightlife and maybe being okay with it, having stories to tell.  My next column is due in a week, and I don’t have any stories to tell beyond “Boy am I jet-lagged from not being in Ireland again.”  I almost know what’s there for me, and I’ll never find out just by squinting from this side of the pond.

I am glad to be home for the reason that I am home, but I miss my new place already.