When I was in France doing nothing but eating and travelling, I aspired the day when I am back in Rotterdam, back in real life. For it was nice living without responsibilities - until the point that you feel itchy for something more.

I've been back for exactly a week now, it has been an incredibly demanding week. Emotionally and physically, I had to run to merely keep up with life. When I was in Indonesia for winter break, my program coordinator called me to ask whether I would join her team as her teaching assistant for the HC. Being a nerd that I always am I said absolutely.

Now on top of my 3 courses, I have another TA job and a position to lead the Board. Funny how one jumped from one spectrum of tasks to another in a heartbeat.

All eloquency aside, all I want to do is to punch Past Denica on her face.

Funny how humans are never satisfied - I guess complaining is a skill printed in too deep to hide.

I know it is alot and I am baffled by how I managed before but slowly I began to wake up not with dread of the fullness of the day but with a tiny excitement.

But of course, I still want to punch Past Denica on her face.

First day back in university. Long. Meetings and interviews splashing cold water to wake you up to reality. Exciting yet abundant responsibilities to recarry. I came home and opened my door to this:



I walked and reached over to read the note. A smile was etched on my cheeks.

Love.



Danke schön, bulu.

Yet another stay is drawing to another end. After almost a month being home, that flight back became more than a flight to another country, it became a flight to another life, another reality. Being here gives one the opportunity to realize, to slowly understand more yet at the same time to be more scared. The mere observation that provides the inevitable fact that your family is growing, each day a little bit older and never coming back, they’re growing older without you. This simple yet difficult thought derives one into emotional battles with one’s self, remarkably when one is about to leave yet once again.

For I realize that leaving becomes more difficult as one gets older, because they’re getting older.

One of my biggest fears is, god forbids, coming home because something had happened. The thought that you were not there kept me awake at nights.

Being a semester away from my degree, I began to ponder gamely what I would do with it. Will I start working, continue my studies, travel, come home? Each scenario was played in my head, closing none of the options. I used to have an idea of a life that I thought I would lead, a life envisioned. What I was continually reminded of is the pace by which they continually change, adapt to the you who you are at that moment. Dreams change. Time changes everything, priorities will be reshuffled. The more you think about it the more confused you get on which path to take next.

We make choices each day, yet some choices baffle with the intensity of the considerations that are being taken into account in order to make them.

I realize I am falling into another fallibility of mine; to think is a blessing yet a dreaded habit when one overdo it at times. A friend laughed and told me over coffee to keep it simple. She received a call one day last year when she was still studying in the States that something had happened to her father. She came back to be with her family and stayed here until now. She had dreams, maybe is she was given a choice she would not have preferred this but she made that choice and regrets nothing. Being here, she told me, did not destroy my dreams. It gave me another.

The idea that each choice will lead to a specifically different outcome might hinder one from making any choice at all. I guess a part of being human is that we just sometimes don’t know. I guess the wise thing to do is to limit it to one step at a time, the next step being that flight back in two days time into real life. The responsibilities that await, the lessons to be learnt entice yet scare me. For no one knows whether one is ready, perhaps ever. I suppose the wise thing to do is just to fly in and see.