Sick

For home.

One of my first thoughts upon arriving at my new apartment was, "Okay, getting here was an adventure.  I'm ready to go home now."

The first two days in SG were pretty rough for me.  Exacerbated, I think, by the jet lag.  There were a lot of tears.  I would wake up in the morning and groggily think that it had all been a dream and when I quickly realized it wasn't, I would burst into tears.  Then I'd walk past a family and sit next to a couple at brunch or smell lilies at the grocery store and I'd lose my shit all over again.  The thought "mistake" kept popping into my head and I kept trying to remember how much I have wanted this and how hard I pushed to get it.

I don't think I managed expectations well going into it.  I was just SO excited.  I kept thinking back to my study abroad experience in Italy and how I didn't really get homesick until about 6 weeks in and how I figured that's what would happen here -- the first few weeks would be bliss, and then I'd be really missing home.  But Italy was different...being in a study abroad program, I had a built-in community.  I had classmates and seven female roommates and everyone was new, everyone was looking to hang out together.

I was so eager to get out of Denver.  I'd lived there my whole life and without owning a dog, being obsessed with skiing or smoking weed, I didn't really feel like I fit in anymore.  I started to feel stagnated in my job and as more time passed, I just knew I need to experience working abroad.  And I was glad to finally be realizing this dream.  Maybe I purposefully didn't let the full weight of what I'd be leaving behind sink in, but I certainly felt it once I arrived in SG.  One of my favorite things about travel is the perspective it gives you...how big (yet also small) the world is, how there are SO many walks of life (but how we're all still humans at the end of the day), etc.  It also has always made me appreciative of what I have at home, but previously I've only truly missed silly things like food and Target.  Wait...I take that back...Target is not silly.  Nor is Whole Foods.  WF - I miss thee!  This time, the appreciation is much bigger.  I know what and who I have at home and what and who I've left and I'm missing it all.

All that said, I'm 100% glad I did this.  I KNOW I would look back with an ocean of regret if I didn't.  And, I've promised myself I'll tough it out for at least a year even though I don't think that will be necessary because all the expats here LOVE it.  I'm just waiting for that day to come around for me :)  Starting work has helped a lot.  I've always found quite a bit of my identity in my professional self and being back in an office (and a DaVita one at that) has been nice.  I have some sense of normalcy and I'll eventually get into a routine.

I read an interview with James Taylor in the Hemispheres magazine on the flight from Tokyo to SG and he said, "I write a lot of songs about the pull of home, the pull of family, of watching the sun rise and set in the same place through the seasons, and then the attraction of wanderlust, of getting out on the road, of seeing the world."  And a line from one of his new songs is:

"My favorite thing is to miss my home when I'm gone."

The man is a genius.