it's weird. for a while now i've been in a state of what i can only label as homesickness, only.. that doesn't make any sense. i don't know what it is i'm sick for. i know now for sure that i can't see myself living in my hometown again, at least not for longer than a few months as a visit. i don't even know if i see myself making a life for myself back in sweden at all (though, of course, i may have to.)

yet, there is something in me that is missing.. something. perhaps it's something as simple as lying next to a stretched out cat on a couch. perhaps it's people, or the way i know exactly how it feels to walk up the hill to our house. perhaps it's nothing.

i can't help but feel confused. the more i try to put my finger on it, the less i'm able to. when i was last back in sweden, i felt so disconnected with the whole experience. it was wonderful to see people who remember me when i was 6 years old, but i also felt very detatched. i felt exactly as what i was - a visitor.

i enjoy where i live now. i don't feel i will stay here for many years to come, but it suits me well for the time being. i love having had a room for almost a year and a half that is truly mine. i love my freedom, getting to choose what goes into my kitchen shelves. and yet, i feel detatched here as well.

i've never felt very rooted. perhaps it's because i've never had a lot of ties to people making me feel like i truly belong somewhere, that it would be impossible for me to simply get up and leave. i always thought that i would grow up to find a space that did tie me down, though.

i know, i know, i'm only 22. it's just, within the past 2 years i have detangled myself from a place of life for 20 years and created a new one, only to find that i am just as detatched, just as rootless.

i have friends here, and i appreciate them a great deal, yet i just know that it is only temporary. i know that they'll move away, or i will move away, and when that happens, i'll have very little contact with them. it's not because there will be a great fall-out, it'll just be because they are there and i am elsewhere and the knots have been untied.

and i hate that. maybe it would be different if i felt i was growing a lot more ties to this place. maybe if with every semester i've been there, my circle of friends had grown and grown so that even when a few disappear, i'll still be connected to other root systems. but that hasn't happened.

oh, i'm sure it's my own fault. i haven't really taken much action to find more people to get to know, or to let a lot of other people get to know me. still. my life consist of four groups of people: people i know in sweden, people from the internet, people i know through aziza, and people i 'know' on the bus (the latter isn't considered a friendship circle, of course, but merely people i've had occasional chats with.)

each circle is very small, and none of them ever touch or overlap. and none of them is consistant. and it sort of scares me.

lately i've been thinking a lot about my future. no, not future as in five or ten years from now. it's more like how things will be after the next semester. see, both gene and aziza are graduating, and as far as i can tell, that means they'll fall off the planet. gene will most likely go back to new jersey, and aziza - i don't know what aziza will be doing. i have a feeling that whatever she'll be doing, it won't involve staying in chapel hill for long. and i understand that. it's just..

it almost freezes my brain to have to think of things like where will i live once aziza graduates and (most likely) leave. dorm? share an apartement with a stranger? (not that gabbi wasn't a stranger, but..) rent a room from somebody? and then there's gene leaving. who the hell will i have around to watch tv with? ;)

part of me is already freaking out by this change that seems far too close. the other is sort of silently wondering things like "what will next halloween be like? will it just be me?"

ah well. whatever. i'll breathe a bit more. i'll live. and maybe i'll manage to sprout another root by that time. peas.