Unknown.

It’s days like today that make me miss home the most. The sky is an ominous gray, rain drips down the window mirroring the tears I deftly try to wipe away before anyone notices. Even the music I have plugged into my ear buds, music that should make me happy, excited, and alive, only ushers my thoughts to a warm car, artificially heated, flying down a highway with the sound turned up high and a friend in the passenger seat. Something completely unavailable here in Cambodia.

I don’t know whether it’s the “you want what you can’t have” rule coming into play, because I’m positive that if I did move back home I would miss the wild splashes of the motos lunging and flying down the crowded streets, the freedom of moving about and living day to day. Coming back from our trip to Scotland and Ireland where things were dreamy, a taste of home and delving straight back into work didn’t allow proper processing time of what the trip meant, how the experiences I went through affected me (which they obviously did), and it makes me afraid to go visit home at any point in time. Sitting at my desk and writing emails and trying to battle a flu doesn’t help either. My mind isn’t in a “safe” place, as in I’m extremely shaky emotionally and that anything can send me over the edge.

What edge? It’s unknown. And that’s particularly what scares me the most. I don’t know what has yet to come this year. Where work will take me, where I will be, what I will do, who I will be with, why I will be doing what I am. I hate the unknown. I like everything under a microscope with scalpel in hand and a lucky 8 ball in the other telling me my future. It’s just as silly as it sounds and I know that- nothing ever works out how I think it will, thank God, but in moments like this where I feel like I’m lost in the lush forests of Washington- it doesn’t make things very tolerable.

But tolerate I will, and during this exercise of self control and reflection I have a strong feeling that growth will come from it. As it generally does. That, I have been blessed with.