Oh, poor me.... but seriously.

Do you ever feel like the people who are physically the closest to you are the ones who are emotionally the furthest away? That is how I feel. I have been home nearly one month and I feel like my friends and family (to a lesser extent) here don't... hmm, how do I say this without making it sound really pathetic or accusatory... they don't seem to care that I'm home? No, God,that sounds awful. I know they care, but let's just say over the year that I was gone life went on (obviously) and now that I'm back it just feels like their lives are still going on without me. Perhaps that's a little bit over dramatic, but I just feel like the people who supposedly care about me the most, the ones who claimed to have missed me so much while I was gone and couldn't wait for me to get back seem to be the ones who don't share big news with me until I hear it from someone else and then ask them about it, the ones who don't return my calls/emails/texts, the ones who have no time for me and somehow no capability to make a wee bit of time to catch up.

On the flip side, some of the really great friends I've left behind in England (or elsewhere) still make the effort and are still interested in what I'm doing and in seeing me... perhaps it's easier when we're all in transit trying to make sense of things around us and trying to fit into lives we thought we'd left behind, but at the same time old friends, good friends, best friends, should make me feel a bit more welcome back here at home.... shouldn't they? I don't know, maybe I'm expecting too much. I know that as the one who left and the one who has returned I should make an effort... but I AM making one.

Yesterday afternoon my wonderful friend Ru called me. From his mobile. From London. Probably one of the most expensive calls he's made in ages, because we spoke for a while... but he made the call because he wanted to talk to me. I guess I am just feeling like the people that I really matter to these days are the ones who aren't here.

Of course there are exceptions (most notably my family), but I just don't feel like I have a place here anymore and I certainly don't feel at home.