Cate's Diary

Back home?

I can't decide whether I'm going back home or away from it.
I love the big city I was born in, our beautiful house in the center, my amazing family, my friends and everything else here.
But ever since I moved to France for the university I've been falling more and more in love with the new place. I love my cute little pink room in that great apartment that I share with one crappy and one not-so-crappy roommate (the crappy one is leaving next month and we have to find a replacement, which stresses me out). I love the medical campus, with all its trees and the benches and the picnic tables and the library and the big amphitheaters. I love the main campus where I go take some classes and where the sports center is (I take ballet classes there and the teacher is so amazing, a story for another chapter for sure). But most of all I love her. Or well, really really really like her. I don't know how long into a relationship you're allowed to say the L-word. But the signs are there, which is kind of scary but exciting too. I for sure love what we have going on. It's simple, calm, refreshing. Like my beloved Amelia Shepherd would say, we are sort of "sliding into it". I love who I am when I'm with her, I love that I don't stress about not being enough, that I don't feel like I'm an obedient little girl (which was the annoying and overwhelming feeling I had with every man I've dated) but a woman enjoying herself with another woman. I love that I'm rarely thinking about the fact that we might break up one day, I'm not scared, I'm not walking on eggshells. I'm just enjoying myself. But it isn't just about her. I can't wait to see her again, that's for sure, but you know what else I miss when I'm gone? The university. My professors. The amazing subjects we have. I miss the long long classes that never end and the incredible feeling of learning something new every day.
I just took the bus to go back to all of that and somehow I feel like I'm going back home.
I've always had this ability of leaving things behind. It makes people uncomfortable and I used to hate myself for that. I used to hate that I could just turn it off, the nostalgia, the melancholy, the feeling of missing home. No, I don't turn it off. I still miss everything, I'm just projected in the future.
And I don't hate that about me anymore.
I actually love it.
I love that, however painful it was to get on that bus and say goodbye to my dad, I still got on and, once it started moving, I was okay. A little sad, but full of hope for the future. I know I'll see him again, I know there will be days when I'll miss him and everyone else so much, but I also know I'm building an amazing life out there and I'm excited to go back to it.
It's getting dark now, I'll be there in 15 hours and I'm smiling thinking of home.
Both homes actually, the one I left behind, the one I love so so much, where all my people are, and the new one I'm creating for myself in another country. Away from my first home for the second time in my 22 years of life.