Creta

Hokey so, I realized that I didn’t write before on what I was going to be doing this week. Well, currently I’m in Crete with my mom and older brother, Brian. But before I get to talking about that—let’s sum up last week: finals, finals, finals. Packing up my stuff. Being too lazy to study all that much. Goodbye diner at Bro’s (which is connected with me drinking a bit too much in front of ACCENT and both bumping into my teacher on the way to the food table and calling a friend who was standing next to her a “little bitch”-- good one, Sarah). Trying to go to gelato with Christine and Ingrid only to find that it’s closed and then we were stalked by some creeper. Packing. Going to bed and only getting about an hour and a half of sleep. Waking up super early to say goodbye to Kat and Jess. Finding out some juicy gossip because I woke up super early to say goodbye to Kate and Jess. Going back to bed for about an hour and a half. Packing. Family arriving. Gelato one last time with Ingrid and Anna. Saying goodbye to Ingrid and Anna. Wanting to cry. Packing. Leaving Rome. Wanting to cry. Getting on plane. Wanting to cry. Getting off plane in Athens at midnight. Not being able to go to sleep. REALLY wanting to cry. Getting into airport at Crete at 7 in the morning. Still haven’t slept. Drive into Chania and lie on a beach. Still can’t sleep. Eat. And then pretty much crabby until I finally was able to sleep that night. Damn, that sucked. Okay, so the next day we hung around Chania some more and we planned on heading down south only to learn that the patrol tank drivers are on strike. And all the gas is sold out. BALLS. And so we are stranded here and hang around for the rest of day. Oh, and my camera officially crapped out on me and is broke. So, now not only is my computer being all janky and breaking on me quite often, but now I don’t have a functioning camera. Cool. The next day we woke up far too early and got on a particularly nauseating bus to Samaria Gorge. Beautiful hike and Brian let me use his camera. About the last 3 miles of the hike I realize Brian’s camera is set to the lowest resolution-CAZZO. There goes all those panoramics I took and was hoping to print out. Now if I were to print them they would be all stretched out and pixilated. Then two days ago we stayed in Chania again. We were all so sore from the hike that we didn’t feel like moving much anyways. Mom and I went shopping around town a bit but not much else happened besides lunch and me trying to plan out my fall class schedule. Yesterday we woke up and drove out of town to Rethymno. A pretty boring town. We went to their Venetian fountain which was written up in my mom’s Crete travel guide as one of the highlights, and it was so dinky and ugly and pathetic. Well, we got some decent food and then went to see one of the last traditional filo masters in all of Greece do his thing. And we bought WAY TOO MUCH baklava and kataifi. This isn’t helping me with my whole wanting to loose weight thing. Seriously, I am like 10 pounds heavier than I ever was in the states and I don’t feel comfortable in my own body but at the same time I’m so lazy and unwilling to do what I have to as to loose weight. It’s a conundrum.

Now that the recap is over, let’s get to the nitty-gritty. So obviously I’m upset that the program is over. I think that the whole thing might have been the best experience I have ever had. I tried something completely new and stepped out of my comfort zone, and was rewarded for it. I love Rome and I love the people I met there and I wish I could be back there with all of them So, I’m upset, a bit depressed, and already in a nasty mood for all of this. I just ended what was probably the best thing I have ever done for myself, so no duh everything after this is going to look unappealing, although I will admit, I do look forward to traveling with Emily and hope that this negatively leaves me by then. Now, my mom and Brian are the two people in the family that piss me off the most. This isn’t to say that I don’t love them, cos I actually do love them. But, man, are they obnoxious. My mom pisses me off because she treats me like a child. Apparently even though I haven’t seen her in four months and I’m more or less (less in the money department—but at least I make my own money and don’t expect them to buy me anything other than the necessities) entirely self-sufficient, I still deserve to be treated as if I were 8. I told her how much this pisses me off and instead of trying to change how she treats me to better our relationship, she tried to rationalize why it’s okay to treat me like I were a child (“But I’m your mom…”). Honestly, I don’t care for any of it. I deserve to be treated like an adult and somehow I was ignorant enough to believe that going off to a completely different continent would aid me in gaining the respect I deserve. Obviously, I was wrong. Brian pisses me off cos he’s disgusting. And I feel like I can only blame so much of it on the ADD. He has terrible table manners, not that I have particularly good table manners, but I’m pretty sure my 4 year old cousin behaves better at the table then he does. He asks obnoxious questions, is lazy, and really both him and my mom know how to and seem to enjoy getting under my skin. Hokey, so with the general depression of the end on my time in Rome and the obnoxiousness of my family, I am not a happy camper.

But honestly, I’m upset for more than just this…I feel like I have lost a part of myself. I feel like a part me, the better part of me, was left in Rome. With my family here I am forced back into that little hole I left behind. I’m expected to be a certain way and so I become it. And I hate that person. I don’t want to dwell on insignificant things or hold grudges or be boxed in or be depressed. And this is not to say that the me I was in Rome isn’t the true me. Cos it is—within a certain context. I have been that me before but it is rare. I’m only that me when I’m happy and it has been years since I got to be happy me for an extended period of time. I just want to be happy and be the person I was last week. I sit at the table while we eat and don’t say a word. I feel like there is no reason to. All they talk about, none-stop, is politics. Obama this, Hilary that. And don’t get me wrong, politics matter and all that. But I’ve been abroad. I didn’t stay up with the news in the states, cos honestly, I didn’t care. I paid some attention to Italian news, but only ever read the Yahoo headlines for my US news. And this ultimately is because I don’t care. I don’t want to live in the US for much longer. And even though I am a US citizen and some of this political shit will still affect me while I am not in the states, I am over the US and its politics. Yes, I am jaded, and no, I care not. And so I sit, holding back my tears. I half listen, but mostly I zone out their incessant babble over who is doing or saying what. Now, I would talk. I could force the conversation another way. But where? Every time I seem to mention Italy or traveling they both get a glossed over look on their faces, or feign an “oh, that’s interesting”. They care as little about the last four months of my life as I do about their obsession with politics. But what else have I to speak of? Italy and travel is all I have known for these past months. And so I remain quite. I have nothing to say to either. I have nothing to contribute to either. And it makes me all that much more moody and makes me feel even more so that the part of me that was left in Rome will never be returned.

…depressing, huh?