Okay, so news alert: packing sucks, I’m sweating like a whore in church, and I’m got a raging headache. I don’t know how anyone does this whole “moving from the country you moved to three months ago back to the country you left” thing, but that’s what I’m doing and I hate it.

In—like idk, two days? A day and half? I’m not great at math, but regardless—a certain, finite amount of time, I’ll be leaving England and going back to America, land of mouth-breathers and Dunkin-Donuts and LORDY LORDY I’M SO EXCITED. I’m excited to be the cool one again. In England I’m essentially Jan Brady, and goddamnit I want to be Marcia again.

I spent two hours of my day sitting on suitcases and trying to shove too many denim shirts into too little of a space, and I realized that American consumerism has consumed me and that we need to fight, Marx-style, against the machine! Lol no, I’m kidding. I just realized that I get a little shopping-crazy and decide to go on a total binge. Which we already knew.

But I think what I hate most about packing is the inbetweenness. You still have to have certain things out—like your toothbrush and your deodorant—and so you’re living in this sort of limbo. I don’t do well with limbo—the concept or the popular game. I like things to be clean and done and over, I hate lingering and half-steps. Give me a full-step.

And it makes me prematurely sad about leaving London. For the last three and a half, almost four months, this weird place has been my home and I’ll be sad to leave behind being an intrepid traveler, getting lost in Spanish Metros, eating sandwiches on a dock in Copenhagen, walking over tiny canals to hidden museums in Venice. I’ll miss being cool, and I’ll miss forcing myself so outside of my comfort zone that I can’t even see it anymore.

Because abroad for me was more than just being abroad. It really made me confront my anxiety. This entire trip was a huge experiment to see if I could be strong enough to override my anxiety and fear of new places. And I think I did it. I think I took a massive enough leap where I shocked the anxiety out of my body, and it’s just WTFing somewhere in the Atlantic.

And so I hate packing because it reminds me that, while excited and glad I am to be going back to my friends and my family and my babes, that this part of abroad growth is over, and that I’ll have to find other ways of growing and getting outside of my comfort zone. Abroad was the easiest and most obvious way, but there are others, and I’ll find them.

Omg, did I just get so fucking deep in a rant against packing? I’m so deep. It’s insane. I’m Mariana’s Trench—the natural location, not the band. Although it’s a pretty good band.

Omg, like goodnight. I’m so tired and I “have” a “final” tomorrow, in which I have to write multiple “in-class essays.” So weird. Must be code for something.

HAPPY HOLIDANNYS!