Never Can Say Goodbye

 I'm fine. I'm okay. 
I will be fine. 

This is what I keep telling myself. It's what I keep saying to my parents. But truthfully, I don't believe it.  All I feel like doing when I think about going back to Denton, is crying. I pretty much am crying. I feel sad. Depressed even. I really don't want to go back. I never have wanted to go back.

I don't understand. It just doesn't make sense to me.

No matter how often I've come home and left, it has never gotten any easier to say goodbye.  In fact, in some ways, it seems to get harder and harder.

Then again, perhaps it's the length of time I stay. The longer I stay, the more comfortable I get being back home and the harder it is to leave. But at the same time, I don't want to stay that short of a time. I love my family. Simple as that.

I feel ridiculous that I get so emotional upon leaving. But I really don't know how to not do so.

You would think that after doing this several times already that it wouldn't be this difficult and yet it still is.

I left home because I had to. I wanted to. There was really not an option. If I wanted to accomplish my goals, I had to leave sooner or later. As it was, I left home when I was almost a Junior (Oh was by NMSU-A's terms). 

I have to keep reminding myself of this fact. I didn't have to leave. I could've been like the majority of my classmates who only moved as far away as Las Cruces; roughly an hour away.

But then again, I had to. Even if I didn't decide to go to Oklahoma State and instead went to NMSU. I would still have had to move eventually for my Master's degree.  Moving was just what I to do.

Yet, I still can't say goodbye when I have to return to school.

Many of my classmates and even my friends don't seem to struggle with saying goodbye to their families. Then again things are different for a lot of them. Some of my friends don't have the option like I do to go home. For them, it's an even bigger distance than an 11 hour drive.

But even people I don't know, don't have the same problems I do it seems. I mean with saying goodbye.

I realize that it's normal for college students to get homesick and to miss their families for the first semester of college. At least, until they get settled into their college and start making friends.  Quite a few people stop coming home as often as they do choosing instead to stay at college with their friends.

However, for me, that's never seemed to happen. I still seem to get homesick. While I realize that I'm not as lucky as some students who get to go home every other weekend or so. I go for months without seeing my family.  I go home for breaks. Winter AND Summer breaks. I have yet to stay where I was for an entire summer. I've gone back early but still have spent part of my Summer at home.

I typically don't go home for short breaks such as Fall break (or Thanksgiving) and definitely Spring break. So in some ways, perhaps it's justified why I stay so long during Winter and Summer breaks.

Yet, I can't help but feel like I should be over this. I shouldn't mind leaving like I do. No one else I know seems to handle it like this.

Maybe it's also because I'm alone. I'm all by myself in Denton. Maybe that's the whole reasoning. Things seemed better in Oklahoma. Sure I still was upset when I had to leave; I missed my family still but things were still difficult at times.

However, I've said this already before, things seem to have gotten worse for me since moving to Denton.  I don't know anyone there. I have no friends there. I hardly know anyone there.  I don't feel part of the University. Things have happened that have made me less willing to go back.  I've tried to get involved and make friends by joining groups, but no such luck. Not even the church feels as welcoming to me as the one back in Oklahoma did.

In other words, I'm pretty much alone in Denton. After 2 years of being there, I'm still so much alone.

Be it the fault of myself or not, I'm still alone and I feel alone. Maybe that's why it bothers me so much to go back.

Here I have family around me. Here I don't feel so alone.

I guess I just really don't know how to be alone. I just can't seem to say goodbye to those I love.