It is 3 a.m. in Georgia and I am sitting on the couch, staring at the backlight of my screen in the dark, unable to sleep. I am almost always unable to sleep in my new home. The bed is the same one that has been in my bedroom since we moved here, but it's in a new room in an apartment leased to my eighteen year old sister. I stare at the walls and I wait and occasionally I sleep, but mostly I lie awake and I think.
It's been raining here, and one afternoon I put a camp chair on the patio and put my legs up on the rail, feet in the rain, and read. Water crawled down my calves, wind blew in my hair, it smelled like earth and I was content. Later, I realized what a sight I must have been. Anyone could fall in love with a picture like that. But there is no one here to see it.
We sold our home on the 28th of July. Everything we have ever owned had to be taken out of the only building we have ever owned and shipped to one of the three new residences being paid for by my family. I find myself wanting to drive by my house (it will always be my house-- I carved our initials in the trees we planted) to see what's been done to it. To see if it still looks the same. I drive back to this apartment, and wonder if I shouldn't miss the house more than I do. It was my first home. It was my only home. I never told it goodbye.
The weight of the house is nothing like the weight of school. I am moving in to a house with 2 people I don't know, with animals for which I don't know how to care, to take classes for which I'm not sure I'm prepared. And as I lay in bed and think about all this pressure, all this stress, all this turmoil, I calm down again.
I am going back to school, which I love.
I am going back to science, which moves me.
I am going back to football, which dictates most of my social interactions.
I am going back to do what I have always meant to do, and there is solace in that. There is comfort in the past, but I am going back to facing the future.
That helps me sleep at night.