Current mood:	pensive
Current music:	Senorita - Justin Timberlake

In like a lion...
I jumped in my car on friday and drove out of my college town as fast as I could, trying to beat the sun to Bennington. I've made the trip a handful of times and it always seems to get longer, as each time my anticipation grows. I had the screaming urge to just go home to Massachusetts but it was significantly hushed as soon as could feel my sister in my arms for the first time in two months.

I spent the weekend sleeping in my clothes and in laughing with then-acquaintances, now-friends. I tramped through mud that stained my clothes and didn't care. I held genuine smiles on my face and camel-shaped cookies in my hands. I felt, and still feel, so humbled and privileged to have friends that care for me though the only thing they knew before this weekend was some faded photographs and dated stories.

I drove home this afternoon and ate food while trying to drive through salt-stained back roads. The weather was beautiful so I rolled down the drivers side window and let the winds cool my face. I heard old songs on the radio that I hadn't sung since I was in high school, a time that feels like eons ago, that were loud and bold against the frequent static of back-country airwaves.

Exit 10a for Worcester/Providence, my exit, finally came into view after three and a half hours of monotony. I pulled up to the house that shaped me as a child and walked through my front door as an adult - noticing all of the change that has occurred since i've been gone. There are new pictures on the walls and magazines that I have not yet read in the trash. I feel like I have almost "forgotten" how to read a newspaper and saw an article on the local basketball teams. I didn't recognize anyone in the pictures and felt disconnected to the area: something I once strove for, but now I don't know how to feel about it. I suppose times change and so do people, but was just not ready to feel so different so quickly.

I used to think of emotions as a bad thing to show and still struggle with how to display them. I used to think of tears as weak and unnecessary, but that was before I went away. That was before I knew what it felt like to miss someone; before I understood the concept of "family" and that blood may be thicker than water but so are hearts. No, this was a time where I rejected words and never knew the powerful feeling of my own hot tears form from the lump in my throat as I heard an actual person, not a phone, whisper "i've missed you so much".