Hello again?

Rebounding is weird. Have I mentioned that? It's true. It's weird. The inside of my brain constantly feels like the abrasive white noise of an indie rock intro where there's drums and guitar and the lead singer wailing and everything is just like AAAHHHHH WHAT IS HAPPENING!

Rebounding is... coming home and suddenly the State Department doesn't pay for your flights anymore, and you're responsible for more than just getting to school at least a couple of times a week so your visa stays valid and your program stays off your back, and your friends aren't the multicultural band of nitwits you used to bitch about everything with, but they're the people you know and love but who get tired of the dumb stories that, like inside jokes, they can't understand.

That isn't to say that my friends at home are any less than my exchange buddies, because they absolutely aren't, but being home and having to stifle this huge thing that happened in my life is difficult and deeply isolating. There are plenty of exchange students and rebounds in Boise, and I'm even involved with AFS here, but through a bunch of weird circumstances I've landed in this position where I'm not actually friends with any of them. Lame, I know.

It's been a while since I've last blogged, and I both missed it and haven't. On one hand, there's SO much left that I can, and want to write about, but the venn diagram of what I want to say and things people probably don't want to hear about anymore is a circle. It feels absolutely pathetic to recount stories that I neglected to tell while they were actually happening to me - like my experiences aren't authentic anymore, because I've had time to brush a heavy layer of nostalgia all over them.

And it's true. My memories have become distorted, by my brain which heroically ignores the pain and heightens everything else. I miss bemo, and the constant conversations with random people, and the malls, and nearly everything else I hated so much about Indonesia while I was there. I can still whinge about Asia with the best of them, but it'd be half-hearted now.

Sometimes I'm just sitting there minding my own business, and then the INDONESIAAAAA pangs hit like a sudden kick to the gut. I'll want more than anything to be back on the busy streets waiting for the bus, or to be lying with Avery watching Skins on her laptop - just to be in the middle of my exchange again.

I'm always grappling with the feeling that I want more than anything to just re-live my exchange as I am now, a happier and brighter version of myself, at the same time knowing that exchange was what led me to this point. A lot of memories of how my depressed self acted are cringe-worthy now, and I've been beating myself up about things that I excused so easily while I was an inbound. There are a lot of regrets involved in being a rebound, and a lot of them are really stupid, like my intense desire to go shopping in Surabaya again.

(Sometimes I remember things that happened, and see pictures, and I think. Holy shit, I LIVED IN INDONESIA FOR A YEAR. Like did that even happen? Whaaat? And that's jarring too. Feeling things is weird. Nachos are better.)

On the other hand, I have some pretty ambitious plans for the future that involve blogging. Like majorly ambitious. I don't want to reveal too much now, because said plans are in their infancy, but I'm looking forward to taking my penchant for blogging and sharing things with people and turning it into something of actual consequence. Rest assured you guys will hear about it when things become clearer.

Otherwise: life. Astagfirulllaaaaaahhhhh is all I have to say. It's been real. Being thrown back into American life, and high school, and the inexorable process of rebounding with no safety net and no convenient handbook has been crazy. Applying to college and financial aid? There have been so many points where I was like, ALRIGHT, WHO DECIDED TO PUT MY ENTIRE FUTURE IN MY HIGHLY IRRESPONSIBLE 18-YEAR-OLD HANDS?

I've gotten into a couple of colleges already, despite some hiccups in the process, but I'm holding out for Lewis & Clark College in Portland. Not only because I've fallen in love with the show Portlandia, but liberal arts college just sounds right for me and Portland is my forever girl, so why not put both together? Just don't ask me what I'm going to major in, cause I don't know myself. Maybe hopefully International Relations or English.

I'm also editor-in-chief of my school's newspaper, despite only spelling chief properly about 20% of the time. Putting it all together is such a rush and I love holding the finished product in my hands, getting to see the ultimate result of so much effort from so many different people. I do love me some journalism; it's absolutely in my future. Watch out, TIME. I'm comin' for ya.

We have excellent taste in covers

This post didn't have a particular point, other than I've missed blogging and rebounding has been kicking me in the ass. I'm sorry to those who looked forward to reading my writing, and such, if there's any of you left. Here's a rebounding/my current favorite songs playlist because procrastination is the word of the day, and I really don't want to read any more of Huckleberry Finn.