“Nights have been hard for me this past week. I’ve been besieged by nagging insecurities and unrelenting, illogical fears, and so I lie in my bed till unholy hours, rolling and fidgeting and trying to find the exact position that will help me forget said fears and insecurities. I don’t exactly understand why, but being alone is now paralyzing, in some way that it wasn’t for Post-Mission-Me. I was so used to having someone near, with whom to converse, to argue with, to eat with, to walk with, to discuss and evaluate life with, to define personal flaws with and then set out to better. I know I’ve been back for almost two months now, and this feeling of isolation and strange alone-ness should probably be gone now, but I actually have no idea how to get rid of it, or how to stifle it, if only to sleep a few sound nights. I thought it was the Monthly Hormone Hurricane, but I think this might be like an actual ‘Me Thing.’ And I’m not dying, it’s just annoying, and I’m also annoyed at myself, like, ‘Jeez, Melody, get a grip. Stop this madness. Go eat an ice cream, read a book, don’t be needy,’ And none of those things have worked. At all. Ugh. Life.” — A text to my unofficial therapist, Marissa; i give her car rides, she gives me therapy
When I was prepping up to come home–emotional bracing, and whatnot–I was told by several people that suddenly being without a companion by your side would be strange; I would probably stick to my mother like a shadow for the first several days. They said sleeping in a room alone, without companion and friend, would be mildly terrifying, that I would probably be a little anxious.
This was not true. I slept fine–like a rock–those first several days. My mother worked, and thus, from 9 to 5, I had no shadow to hide under, and I didn’t feel anxious in any special way whenever I adventured off. Strange, yes, a little. But not anxious, or scared or any of the things I thought perhaps might happen, the things I had been warned of.
But I suppose mine was a slow process though. A series of days upon days building up upon one another, weeks slipping by. It was something I wasn’t even sure I noticed, for a while, at least. But now, forty-three days in, it’s hit home, like a monster that sat patiently in my closet since day one, biding it’s time, waiting to creep out. You’ve been there all along, haven’t you?
I am without companion and friend. However difficult it was to literally have to have someone there all the time, I had someone there all the time. It was easily as comforting as it was discomforting, at times as liberating as it was depressing. And sometimes that person pushed and nicked at sore spots, gouging under the skin, and made one want to rip out their hair, but that person was there to make things okay when things felt like it certainly wasn’t okay.
Nights are suddenly longer, harder to sleep through, and I occasionally just sit, and feel a lacking, looking for someone over my shoulder. I wonder where I might go to find a friendship like that again, a companionship so loyal and, admittedly, annoying, but loved.
I suppose today I miss companionship and companions, simultaneously, all at once. It’s a mess. Well, I’m a mess, but, fortunate for Marissa, she landed herself in London for half the summer, so we’ll have to hash out this hot mess when she gets home, but until then, watch out for that Compton girl. She’s a strange combination of weepy and rash these days. It’s not a pretty sight to behold.
Of North-Eastern Peru 