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.