I arrived in Russia approximately 20 hours ago. Those 20 hours have been nothing but terror, tears, extreme loneliness, and some very uncomfortable self-questioning. However, this time around nothing externally bad has happened. This time I did not arrive in Moscow hung over and 12 hours late, I did not lose my luggage, and most importantly, someone was there to pick me up from the airport.
The problem is the overwhelming emotional pain I am experiencing, due namely to the fact that I am in a new place, with new people, a new language, and an uncertain future. I miss my parents like hell, and at this moment I would give away everything I have just to return home. On the plane ride over here and the entire time I've been here, this question has been bouncing around in my head: Why did I just give up everything I had, everyone I love, for this hell-hole of a country? Why would I want to relinquish the life I had back in the states, which, I must admit, was an amazing/perfect/awesome/love-filled life, for this? For a country in which there is not a single person who gives a shit about whether I live or die, for a country over which a heavy cloud of oppression still lingers (it's practically tangible) from the Soviet era, for a country whose people are (pardon my French and my over-generalization) assholes?
As I sit here on the marble floor of the main building of Moscow State University, illegally bumming WiFi from the cafe upstairs, my tears do not seem to want to stop falling for anything, and my keyboard keeps screwing up because it is getting soaked with them. I am 23 years old and should be able to handle this like an adult. Why am I so afraid and so ready to give up? Nothing bad has happened to me (yet). I just miss my family and my friends and want nothing more than to be loved right now. But that, unfortunately, is the one thing I can't have right now: the embrace or touch of a loved one.
How am I going to do this?
Oh Buffy, even though you are far away, you are still loved and thought about. I miss you so much and I think about you every minute. I know it is hard, what you are doing, just know that you are so very much loved, just from a distance. You are in my heart no matter where you are. I love you, Mama
ReplyDelete