Home for the holidays (I set myself up for failure, so I failed).
In reference to Winter break 2016–2017.
Background:
I am in the middle of my junior year. Academics are fantastic, friends are fantastic, freedom and independence are sweet. Housing is shit. I live on campus. I have lived on campus since I came to college 2.5 years ago as a 28-year old freshwoman. I decided to embrace the experience fully and live in a dorm room. It was fine for the first year, but then it got old SUPAH FAST. This past summer, I turned 30 and it got really unbearable. I will write another post about this so I won’t go into all the reasons right now. A big one for winter break 2016–2017 is that I was evicted from said dorm room and had to come back to Georgia — my parents’ house — for an entire month. End background.
Spending a month in ‘rural’ Georgia is a problematic prospect (for me) for several reasons:
1. I guess it’s not truly rural, because there is a Walmart. But I still say rural because it is always close to 1 hour away from anything of importance that you would want to do for entertainment or recreation.
2. I have no transportation (private or public) here. As I had lived for over a decade past, coming back home makes me reliant yet again on my poor dad, brother, and kind friends for rides everywhere.
3. This relegates me to being in the house for 90% of the time, alone. My hardworking parents and brother work hard every single day. Just because the “college kid” is home doesn’t mean that everyone drops their lives to entertain me. Money still has to be earned. Food still has to appear on the table. And no, my undocumented family does not have jobs where they get the luxuries of vacation time and holidays off.
4. With this lack of mobility and extended periods of time alone, I sleep. I eat. I watch TV. I watch Netflix. I sleep some more. I eat some more. I gain weight. I become lethargic and listless. I question my existence and ponder my purpose in life. I am RIGHT BACK to where I was before the great escape!
5. PTSD. I don’t mean to trivialize or diminish the actual disorder of PTSD, but I don’t know how else to label what it is I experience when I come back home. For years and years, I lived a very repressed, suffocating, miserable and hopeless life (I learned what it means to be “bored to tears”). Coming back home, being in the same bedroom, seeing the same environs and wearing the same clothes in the same drawers puts me RIGHT BACK in that dark, miserable head space. I don’t know how it happens, or why. Clearly, my life is way different now. I moved on! I am in school — progressing and advancing myself for a greater good. So why is it that I am prone to those feelings and the associated mental agony by a mere temporary visit home? Another post on this as well.
My plan of counter measures:
Before leaving D.C., I had a plan to not let the above list get to me. Firstly, I was going to borrow cars whenever they were free and get out there and drive myself places without having to bug anyone (imagine meeting up with friends without them having to drive 1 hour to get you and then 1 hour to bring you back home!). Secondly, I was going to write. I was going to start the blasted blog once and for all. I also came up with a neat idea to write my dad’s biography — my dad will randomly say things about his upbringing or past life in Guyana and I’m like “Wut?” He grew up in poverty (like 3 brothers sharing one towel-poverty) and overcame a lot of adversity to get where he is now in America, and I feel like his story is worth writing down, if only for me and his future grandchildren. So I had the brilliant idea to “interview” my dad every day and take notes of his story to mold into a book or novel or something.
I felt like that was sufficient armor to keep the boredom and misery at bay if I had to spend a whole month in rural Georgia. Not bad, right?
How I failed:
I learned how to drive at age 27 when DACA allowed me to legally get a driver’s license. My dad patiently taught me for several months in empty parking lots. I drove my work commute, 1 hour each way, every day with my dad in the passenger seat to prepare me for the test. I passed the test. But I never got comfortable driving. I was always afraid — of making a bad move, hitting someone, causing an accident, etc. In my “old age” of awareness, not having the carefree mentality of a 15 year old learning how to drive, I was hyper aware that I was in control of a giant killing machine. My driving excursions were marked by fear and nerves. I actually didn’t make many mistakes, and always got to my destination without incident, but it wasn’t until I parked that I felt the tension ache in my back and neck. Soon after I got the official license, I received my scholarship and started packing up to move to D.C. where there was public transportation at my fingertips. And of course, I couldn’t afford to get my own car anyway. So driving halted. It never took.
Right now, I still can’t get over the fear and nerves. I get presented with the opportunity to drive and I decline. So, no taking the car and going places for me.
My dad worked every day and when not working, he was busy with other chores and errands. And then, I just wanted to let him rest. I never broached the idea of sit-downs so I could write his story.
I got sick. I am prone to bad colds and wracking, never-ending coughs. I’m the girl who can’t leave the house with wet hair, and needs to wear a hat when it is 50 degrees out. I got an upper respiratory tract infection and was essentially laid up in my bed for over a week. I felt incredibly unproductive, bored, and useless. Being that sick ate up a good chunk of winter break time, where I could have been out with friends, hanging out with my brother and his girlfriend, or simply, writing.
I feel like these were conscious failings on my part because with the driving, I still let my fear control me. With my dad, I could have explained my idea and see if he was open to giving me even 30 minutes a day of biographical conversation. Though I got the cold, mostly out of my control, I still could have written for this blog. But instead, I did nothing. I slept. I ate. I watched TV.
I think I set myself up for this failure. I knew exactly how challenging an entire month in Georgia would be this winter break and instead of focusing on the promising plan that I made to counter it, I let myself get sucked back into the negative mentalities of fear and “why bother?”
But it’s ok. Life goes on. I have just one day left of this hapless winter break. I will get back to school and feel like myself again — purposeful, independent, and (somewhat) in control.
I hope to not have to spend the entire month of winter break in GA again because next time I will have my own place in D.C. where I come and go as I please. This is a major goal for 2017.
I also have to keep writing. And I need to drive. Fear is such a waste of time and energy.
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