ERROR 404: ‘home’ does not exist anymore.

Mine is easily the most confusing mind ever. I am constantly bored and completely pent up with energy while simultaneously being completely overwhelmed with emotion and frozen in time, not wanting to do a single thing. Oh my god dude someone just put me on medication already this is fucking ridiculous. I was hoping that by this point in my life, by the point I turned 20, that I would actually feel like I’ve accomplished anything, but alas.

Surely I’m not the only one annoyed with this. I mean, if this is the only thing I can talk about, it has got to be incredibly irritating to deal with from an outside perspective. If this is what I have to deal with just in my own head on a daily basis, there is absolutely no way that someone else that interacts with me doesn’t see this or at least feel the martyr energy radiating from me within a 20-mile radius.

There are some days where I look at myself and I feel so grateful for where I’m at in my life, so proud. Today is not one of those days. Today, I feel completely inferior. I feel like I am looking at myself through a cloudy window. Humiliated, like someone put a hazy fabric over my eyes and forced me to give an important speech to a crowd of people and the teleprompter is in Russian. I don’t even think I have the capability of being a person anymore. I am getting stopped at every possible moment and then fucked in the most violent and invasive way imaginable with no safe word and no previous negotiations. I didn’t ask for this, yet it seems like my body loves to work against itself to make me as miserable as possible without anyone else being able to tell. And what a fun game that is! How mentally unwell can I feel before the signs start showing up on the exterior as well as the interior?

Maybe I should go back to my poetry roots, since it seems I can only create short-form metaphorical content.

For the first time in a very long time, I had a thought. Nothing I will act upon, don’t start calling the local hospitals, but still. It was something. I have been crying nonstop for the past few days, maybe it’s because I should be getting my period soon, I always want to end it all before I get it. This is mostly a joke, but I do get especially depressed when I’m about to get my period. Like more than the normal ‘this is what my usual depression feels like’ state. Either way, the general depression has been bad enough on any given day, so I don’t really have any other opinions on the matter.

I feel like I am seeing a version of me that doesn’t exist. Like, I am seeing glimpses of myself, but they leave too quickly for me to remember who I used to be before I became swallowed by this feeling. Everything I do is like one major acting gig. Consider this my Oscar-worthy performance. Each time I go out, every interaction with a friend or another living, breathing human being, is the greatest effort. It is no longer me speaking to them. No longer me smiling and laughing at what they are saying. I have no clue who this stranger is inside of my mind. I am nothing more than an unwilling puppet, directed by an equally incompetent, blind driver. There’s no end destination, no true goal or understanding of where we’re supposed to go, the only certain thing is to make sure I don’t fuck up the act in front of anyone else. If they see me crack, I have truly failed. And what a weird balance that is. For me to constantly talk about how much I want someone to quietly see how much I’m struggling and just be there for me in small ways, and yet how much I also desperately hope that no one pities me or strays too close to the edge of worry. I’m not fragile, I’m not going to break, as much as it feels like it sometimes. The second someone treats me like I will, it will kill me.

Lately, I have been dreading the idea of going home. Dreading what it will be like to leave this little bubble of simplicity, this world where it feels like nothing can hurt me too bad when I live here. Nothing will ever be the same again. I will go home, and I’m so afraid that I will never be able to come back. I have never felt safe in a place before like I have here. It feels easy. Simple. If and when I go home, everything will come crashing down. I will have to go back to reality. Back to being the person that everyone knows. To the person with a great story of her short experience living a life of someone more privileged and happier than she will ever be again. I never want to go home again.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I don’t miss home. I miss it exponentially. I miss my cats. I miss my house and my street and knowing where everything is. I miss my friends, my parents. But I can’t go back. If I go back, I won’t be able to find the money and a good enough reason to come here again. Like everything else in my life, it will get in the way. Money will get in the way. It always does. Every. Single. Time. I don’t doubt that everyone else in my life will come to the same conclusion as me: this was an incredible, life-changing, delusion. A one-time experience, like a prisoner being shown a picture of his childhood home before he is put to death. Like taking your dog to the fields and giving him his favorite food one last time. I have become a lamb to the slaughter that is capitalism and the Great American Economic Crisis. This is a cruel reminder that I will have to go back to the truth eventually. Truth that I will always have to go back home. I have to make my peace with that.

Each of my friends here have all talked about traveling after classes are over, and yet it feels like it is a thousand times harder for me to do that. I can’t change my flight without it costing way too much. I can’t fix my residence permit unless I can actually speak to someone who knows what they are doing. I can’t ship back suitcases without it equaling a small house payment. Nothing is easy. So, I leave when my lease is up. Before Midsommar, before I can see my friends visiting from Philadelphia, before I can make any more decisions for myself.

Also, the concept of applying for jobs has got to be one of the single most embarrassing things ever. I swear to God, it’s a real-life humiliation ritual, and a test of how well you can lie about yourself. I was applying to who-the-fuck-knows-where last night, and one of the questions (side bar, half of this shit is done by an AI now, so we are all fucked) asked me if I ever ‘get frustrated sometimes’ …right. So, I said no, because apparently you want a fucking superhuman now. But that question alone made me frustrated. Anyways, that was just a side comment because this shit has been pissing me the fuck off more than you could ever imagine. Like, everyone keeps saying that no one wants to work, but baby I am trying. This is literally impossible. I have applied to over 50 places in the past month, both for this Summer and this Fall. Have I heard anything yet? Anything at all? Of course not. Half of the ‘AI interview questions’ that I’ve been asked involve questioning my mental health: ‘Do you ever get sad sometimes?’ ‘Do you have highs and lows?’ ‘Do you get stressed sometimes?’ and I answer: No, of course not! Because everyone who knows me knows that I am just the most cheerful and go-with-the-flow person ever, who never lets anything bother me because I am simply perfect! Jesus Christ. Asking me shit like the answer isn’t so obviously yes, but because your local Macy’s or Old fucking Navy requires me to sell these jeans to your 80-year-old grandma with a smile on my face and the feeling of corporate family in my soul. Give me a break.

The point of that is, I really, really, do not want to go back home. I’d love to get a job here. I could figure it out and live in a teeny tiny apartment while I try to save up to pay my rent. But there’s this thing called University, and I kind of still have to finish it. Plus, I have no prospects, no license, and no credits to my name enough to get me absolutely anywhere by myself. So, all-in-all, the pipedream of me running away and living in Europe for the foreseeable future is going to have to wait until I have an actual bachelor’s degree. I guess I don’t technically need one, but seeing as it has been my soul focus and goal since I was a child, I feel like it would only be letting myself down if I didn’t at least see this one thing through. Besides, I love learning. Like, so much. I want to learn every language, go to every place, live the life of my dreams. Something tells me that everyone and their mother also wants something of a similar nature. Everyone in America at least. Half of us are trying to leave, but with the current financial state, what with the housing and job market going to absolute shit, I have no clue how literally anyone in the United States is even able to live at this point. It has become nothing but work until you die. I don’t know about you, but I actually want to do something with my life, and I will not become the next random name to pop up in the obituaries that no one reads anymore, solely because I dropped dead at 30 from a heart attack due to the stresses of living the American dream.

Am I saying that my mental health has been solved and I am a standup citizen now that I’ve lived in Europe for 5 months? No. Absolutely not. What I am saying, however comma, is that I have learned that people here value their time and space over working until they die. Obviously, people still work. Jobs are a thing everywhere. But the concept of working means a completely different thing to Europeans. I have not heard a single person here complain about always working, or money problems. And let me clarify something, I am in no way saying that they don’t exist, because the 100% do. But, it is a completely different level to the way we view working and money in America. All this to say, I kind of feel like I was dealt the short end of the stick on the money/job department. To no fault of my parents, they are incredibly on top of things, and they can’t control the fact that they were born in America. And hey! I’m sure at some point that would have been a dream for a lot of people. I mean, I do live right next to New York. That’s not something everyone gets to say. Still though, I feel as though the cons outweigh the pros just a little bit, especially with the lovely state of my country right now! (thank you, so much for that, Donny T.)

The concept of simply just going back to my normal everyday life in New Jersey after living in Europe for 6 months, seems like an evil ploy from someone more powerful than me to trap me in an endless cycle of working through insomnia-induced hallucinations in order to get every task done in a 24-hour time period. I have built something of a small friend group here. I’ve gotten comfy with the general area, and there is still so much more I need to see. I can always come back, yes. I know this. But it doesn’t feel the same. This has changed me in ways I cannot explain, and nothing will match this feeling. I am afraid I will become like an addict of sorts, trying to find the same feeling of peace and space that I have found here. And look, I am not saying I am happy, as a matter of fact, I am extremely unwell mentally. But I feel peaceful. And I have an independence that I would have never dreamed I would get to have at 20 years old. I thought I would have to wait until I was in my 30s, miserable and leeching off of my family, living at home until I could afford my own place. I will not let that happen. If this has taught me absolutely anything, it’s that I refuse to be living with my parents at 25. I will do whatever I can to live alone and also travel. I cannot—I will not—be a nobody, someone with no money, a job that I hate, and years of resentment. That is for people that give up. I will do something better with my life, there is no point to anything else if I am miserable.

I don’t know where my home is anymore. I don’t know what my end destination is, but I know it won’t involve me stuck in the same place forever. I love New Jersey, I really do. I like that I grew up there. But I don’t want to live there forever. I never want to leave Jersey forever, and I know I’ll enjoy living there for however long I need to in order to save enough money to move for good, but I absolutely will not live in America longer than I have to. I will find a way to come here again. I will find a way to make it work. It is the only option. I love travelling more than anything, and I hope that I can write and film things from wherever I choose one day. These feelings can’t last forever. I have to believe that everything will work itself out. It has to.