Until home again;

do you ever just lay in bed and think about how much you adore your friends

like even the ones you don't talk to anymore or you've drifted away from, do you ever just sit and think of how incredibly lucky you are to be existing right here, in this wide vast universe with all it's wild coincidences, at this very moment, and to be lucky enough to live with the memory locked in your head of the time you were sad all day but your friend came to sit with you during dinner and made paper airplanes out of napkins in the cafeteria and told you he loved you too while leaving.

or the time you spent watching basketball games and you spent the whole time laughing so hard with your group that you fell over and broke the auditorium stage somehow and yet still kept on laughing.

or the times you spent together in comfortable silence watching the rain together while leaning your head on each others shoulders, sharing each others' lunch in the dreary weather and keeping each other warm

or even just texting each other until 4am talking about all the secrets of the universe and do you think parallel worlds exist and what makes your heart beat with joy and why do you think we were all put here and whats your favorite memory with your parents when you were young

the people i have met over time, whether i still talk to them or not, have smiles who could make flowers grow, have the most beautiful sparkles in their eyes, have the most passionate, kindest hearts, and its because of these kinds of people i still have hope. i'm so very far from home. i'm so very lucky to have met people who truly feel like home.

i didn't mean to get so emotional tonight i guess, but hour long phone calls from home can fly by in an instant and can tug at your heart a whole lot sometimes. i got to make a lot of new memories with wonderful people this week and feel so much closer to them while also reminiscing with friends i haven't talked to in what feels like years

to each and every one of them; i miss you. i love you so much and you have no idea how lucky i am to have met such talented human beings all with the tendency to remind each other how much they love each of their friends constantly. until home again, we'll finish that list together one day.

to the ones i haven't talked to in ages; until home again, my heart aches for you.

_          ☁          _

fun fact: building tiny houses is actually a whole lot of fun and working in construction isn't actually terrible after all. try new things, kiddos. 

this week's playlist

the lonely mountains -  kim janssen // promise - ben howard // terrified - issac gracie // ride - twenty one pilots & mutemath // behind the sea (alt. version) - panic! at the disco // if you like it or not - the brobecks // 99 luftballoons - nena // someone to stay - vancouver sleep clinic // seventeen - alessia cara

week one: flaming cheetos and root beer cans are my only friend

homesickness is a funny thing i think. leaving home even if its only for a couple years feels strange.

because 1. there are so many things to explore. there's people to meet, all this new knowledge at your fingertips and there's nothing stopping you now from going out to grab it but yourself, and there's new sights to see, new feelings to feel. it's impossible to imagine colors you've never seen before, and now it feels like they're all here and you're chasing after them the best you can and everything's grown to become nothing but an overwhelming blur of colors you've never heard of before.

2. you never really realized before how little prepared you were to deal with everything. the feelings, your financial state, awful wifi (like seriously, why), working out shower routines with your roommate, taping up pictures in your bedroom in a weak attempt to make it yours, the conversations with the war veterans in the airports when your flights delayed, all the perspectives of everyone else and all their backgrounds being mushed together into this one place where you're meant to live together for a while.

3. finding out just how young you are and how little you actually know in the grand scheme of things is very grounding. maybe you got comments growing up, "you'll understand when you're older," but then you get older and you understand nothing.

and in the middle of all this newness there's always that invisible string that keeps you tied to your home and sometimes it accidentally pulls at your gut and drags you backwards a bit. sometimes it hurts.

when does this "older" thing happen even, when do you get to the point where you understand even a smidgen of the universe to the point where you can feel emotionally stable and not start panicking standing in the middle of a brand new town all by yourself with no one you know? has anyone made it to that point? where are they so they can give us all a visit and show us how to make it through the day without tripping and falling into a wall??

_ _ _

in other news, I've finally found a new job, classes are going well, no one's gotten murdered, I've got cheesy little planet + stars + spaceship stickers all over my room and a thriving cactus I dragged all the way to my new bedroom, and I even managed to make friends. i'd call this first week of all this a success so far

I guess a person is  t e c h n i c a l l y  supposed to introduce themselves at the beginning of something, but hello!!! to sum all that this is up; i'm kelsey, i'm like 4 years old at this point, and i recently took a plane to exchange schools in a new place to take classes and try to experience a little more of the world. am i actually going to survive until the end of this? will i ever get decent pictures of the campus to show?? will i ever get my sleeping schedule in order? ?   ?      ?

well kids, find out on the next installment of "Help, I Am A Child & Don't Understand How To Fill Out Tax Forms"