Homesickness: reverting adults to children since the beginning of time

As my mom says, my cup runneth over.

I've been feeling really overwhelmed lately at all the good things that are happening to me lately.  Among other awesome things, I'm enjoying most of my internships a LOT.  One could possibly turn into something where I might get paid.  I've discovered an amazing new hobby that fits my current lifestyle perfectly.  I'm finally starting to meet more cool people and hang out with people.  At last, I'm settling into life in LA.  On top of that, I'm going home in three weeks, which, despite all the goodness of LA, is very exciting.  My dad will be coming out a few days before I leave and we'll be touristy together and then fly home together afterwards.  So, I'm really excited about that.  On top of THAT, every day, I'm getting more and more excited about my boat adventure, which draws ever nearer.  Basically everything is good right now.

So why do I feel so rotten?

I honestly think that all of this wonderfulness is too much.  Because I'm excited about both being here and going home, I'm feeling highly conflicted.  I get so frustrated because I have too many things to be happy about.  Then I get even MORE frustrated with myself because I'm not appreciating everything that I have!  GOD, Tessa, why can't you stop being frustrated by your good fortune?  You're so FRUSTRATING!!!

This isn't my photo, but I did go here the other day (my first time to the beach since I've been here!) and it was absolutely lovely-- yet another under-appreciated awesome thing.

There's also the fact that nothing in the world is ever perfect, so even the tiny things (or not so tiny things) that go wrong nowadays seem even more awful because of all of the emotional pileup of the positives.  So basically what all of this inner conflict is forming into is an extreme feeling of homesickness.  I just want to be back home where everything is how it used to be because it wasn't this confusing then.  I realize that that's a really pared down way of looking at things, and probably also an inaccurate way of looking at them, but the fact is, that's how I'm feeling.  In my past experience, homesickness always gets worst when you start closing in on going back home, because home suddenly becomes this soon-to-be-tangible thing, and you want it right away.

It was really nice because one of my sisters' boyfriends texted me the other day and it turned out that he and his a capella group (the same one that my brother was in when he was still at college) were in LA for a few days, and he invited me to hang out with them some time before they left.  That was awesome because I thought it would be nice to see some familiar faces from my pre-LA life to ease some of my homesick tension.

This is one my favorite songs of their's: House of Blue Lights

It was lots of fun.  Even though each year as my brother gets further and further from school, I know less and less guys in the group personally, it's still great (plus, my sister's boyfriend is still in the group, so that's a nice thing).  They're a really fun, welcoming group of people.  I love listening to them sing (because I love a capella and because they're really good), and it's kind of nostalgic for me now because I've been going to their concerts since I was a sophomore in high school when my brother started singing with them.

Here's my sister's boyfriend singing with some other members of the group.

Unfortunately, although it was definitely fantastic to have a little pre-LA-life booster, I felt a little bit overwhelmed by it.  After I left I felt sad and even more homesick...I really need to learn to find a balance between the positives and the negatives of situations...I surprised myself when I got to my car and suddenly started crying.  I think that fun little excursion outside of my completely distinct life that is my life in LA was just enough to put me over the edge.  I wrote in a recent post about awesome things about laughing to yourself when no one's around.  It's quite satisfying.  I have a much harder time with crying when no one's around (which is weird because I don't like crying when people are around either-- there are a select few people that I will willingly cry in front of), but I realized that it's just as satisfying, if not more so, than laughing by yourself.  Once the waterworks snuck up on me, I decided to just let it out.  Who cares?  All I wanted to do was go home and curl up in my bed and eat chocolate and hug my parents and nuzzle my dogs.

Now, as I'm writing this, I'm really glad I allowed myself to do that, because it was a nice, cleansing purge.  I think that I should be able to find an inner balance with a little bit less mental effort now.