Mid-week, Third Week Hump

The first week I arrived in Tucson, I stayed at my friend's house. There were dogs and cats and people and happenings. I was borrowing vehicles and living in a suitcase. I was running around trying to find a bike and an apartment. I was nuts.

My second week I found an aparment. Then I found a bike. I got my bike, I got my apartment, and on Sunday, I moved.

I am now in my third week in Tucson. I have not unpacked because there's no where to unpack to. I have a desk (pulled out of the garbage the day I moved in) without a file cabinet for my files or even cups for my pens. I have closets and a few hangers but no shelving or dresser for my under things.

This is my first week alone. My first night was loud and turbulent. I awoke to realize I forgot a shower curtain, then the toilet flooded my apartment and the one downstairs. I have discovered over the last few days that my downstairs neighbor's tv is only off for four hours a day (8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.), my neighbor's apartment door bangs open and shut all hours of the day and night, and as per the phone call I made when glass was all over the landing, my neighbors do that crap regularly.

I chat with my sister via text message, I post on facebook, but I do not see anyone I am close to for the rest of the day. I am alone, and I am not handling it well.

I tend to be rather social. I chat with strangers, I will talk your ear off at a party, I'll giggle and make jokes with you, whoever you are, with only a brief introduction (or no introduction) wherever we may meet. I seem to have more than the normal number of close friends although they have been spread all over the country at this point.

To not come in contact with any of them, to not have touched another human being in four days, appears to already be taking its toll on me. I had no idea that I was that reliant on face-to-face socialization. I honestly thought I could handle all online communications. I was mistaken. I feel so disconnected from everybody. When I get to talk to someone, I babble. And babble. And babble. A I even feel it from my sister and father, and they are people that I'm used to not seeing regularly.

I will be visiting with some folks tonight. It's a friend that I stayed with when I got to Tucson but hadn't seen in five years before. There is a group of people I never met until I arrived in Tucson, and I want to be with the people I'm close to. I want to cuddle my cats and not someone else's cats. It's strange because I spent a full year away from home in high school, but I didn't experience this home sickness that I seem to be experiencing.

I'm not missing home, though. I'm missing people. I didn't experience this people sickness in New Zealand. Probably because I was busy and didn't just sit in an apartment alone. Also, used to think that "Leaving on a Jet Plane" was a joyous song and didn't understand why everybody always sang it so melodramatically.

When I start making more money, I'll start working afternoons in a coffee shop. I'll have my mornings alone in the apartment when it's quiet, and then I'll spend my mornings over at Raging Sage or Avenue Coffee (or Cartel Coffee or whatever the heck they want to call it) with a hot cuppa, an internet connection, and the hum of strangers around me as I quietly go about my work. I do miss Jernabi in Potsdam, New York, though. Mmmm, good coffee, great staff, great owners, and their very own lightsaber hanging on the wall. The lightsaber would be more impressive if they dusted in some time.