Well, I'm back.

I said that I was going to try and update this blog while I was away. I lied. I didn't update. I didn't even try.

To be honest, I don't want to get into everything that went on over this trip right now - maybe I'll tell y'all later, maybe I won't. Right now the thing you should know before reading is the strange story of last night.

I couldn't sleep last night. And I don't mean like "oh i went to bed at 10 and was lying awake until 1am" kind of couldn't sleep. I mean I legit went to bed at 10:30 and I was STILL AWAKE when the birds started singing and the sun started rising. My friends Hannah and Hannah can attest to this because around 3:30am I finally gave up and skyped them.

So yes, bear in mind that I am writing this on an odd day, having spent the night awake, and slept from around 6am-11am. Also I have a bit of a cold/allergies/something from travelling (my poor Dad and sister got sick too on our trip! :( )

Reasons for this disturbance by be two or threefold. One, as I said I'm feeling ill. Two, because I took a new medicine not last night but the night before - this country's version of NyQuil - and it WORKED and knocked me out hard for a night, and the next night I didn't take it and this happens. I'm not saying it was a cause, just that there was a co-incidence. I hope it wasn't the cause. Finally, and perhaps the most likely, as sad as this is to admit - two nights ago I finally decided that it was in the best interest of my health to stop allowing myself to get on Tumblr on my phone, especially right before bed or right after waking up. I'm not 100% off of tumblr for now but I'm trying to stop being on my phone so much in bed. So it may be this altering of my nightly routine which has screwed me over. Here's to hoping I can fix that without giving in.

Ok so what was I talking about? The trip? Oh yes. Well, you may have seen the 400+ pictures I posted on Facebook, along with those my sister posted. I won't bother moving them here. But we did a LOT - we went to Dublin, say the Book of Kells and Long Room in Trinity College, to Belfast, where we went to the north coast, along with ulster museum, carrickfergus caslte, dundrum castle, tullymore forest, basically all my favorite places. We went to Edinburgh, the castle and museum there, Arthur's seat, Holyrood, I barely remember what else. We went to London, to the Tower and Big Ben and to Westminster Cathedral, and the Palace and to the museum and the Globe and EVERYWHERE, and finally to Oxford, to the castle and to the Ashmolean, and the Bodleian and the natural history and Pitt Rivers. SO MUCH. Castles and museums galore!

I hadn't done all of it - I especially loved Westminster Cathedral and the Tower of London because I hadn't been there before, and I loved the north coast because I saw it in a new light (also people care a lot more about Game of Thrones now than they did in 2012! :P ).

Not everything was great though. And I still feel that a lot of that was my fault. I really didn't realize just how much I've changed - and how long it had been since I lived with other people. I've become a far more quiet person I think, in Oxford, and more independant and I kind of forgot what it was like to have to plan so much with other people and communicate and share space. I don't think I handled that well, and there were more than a few arguments and me being super grumpy.

The worst part was that some of the time, maybe a lot of the time, I didn't eve know why. I would get annoyed, get grumpy, and get downright mean, and I couldn't even say WHY. Eventually I talked with my mom about it like three times. And I think some of it was just frustration at myself. I remember what it was like visiting all of these places for the first time, 4 years ago. (was it really 4 years? 3.5? dear Lord.) I remember being giddy with excitement about EVERYTHING, about the cobblestones and about the stone buildings, about Harry Potter, C.S. Lewis, Doctor Who, and that whole lot. I remember seeing Newcaslte (NI) and Edinburgh and thinking "yeah, I would move here".  Even JUST at this past Christmas I was in Belfast thinking "ah it's so good to be back, I can't believe I'm here again!) And this time? 4 years later, going back? I just, somehow, wasn't.

I said a few posts ago that I felt dead inside. That's exactly what this was like. Is like. I don't know. Maybe it was stress, or worry, but I was in Edinburgh - finally back - and it was just sort of... OK. I really, really, really hope that my family loved it like I did the first time. And to be honest this lack of response on my part really scares me. Maybe I put too high an expectation on all of this, I'll give you that, but still. I felt... numb.

I'm feeling a little more upbeat this morning but I guess I still want to tell you about the darker stuff before I leave. Despite arguing with my family a lot, the absolute worst bit was them having to leave. I think the day of I handled it OK. I miss them already and they aren't even home in Texas yet.

But the night before that - not this past night or the one before, but the one before THAT, I had... let's call it a bit of a breakdown. I don't know if I want to describe it at length but mentally it's like I suddenly realized - they are leaving. It's ending. This big thing that I've planned for and looked forward to is here, and gone, and it's ending. And I felt like I had barely spent any time with them at all. And they were leaving. And - this is what hit me, and I mean this actually did feel like a physical punch to the gut, like a hand on my throat, like a very physical weight on me, this is what kept playing over and over and over in my head: I was going to be alone. Again.

I cried. A lot. And my mom helped and talked me through some of it. I don't know how moms do it but I really, really, really needed that. I won't go into details. Anyway. It caused me a bit of crisis, I guess. Some reexamining which was long overdue. I got back home and I, for the first time in a very sadly long time, turned to Scripture to try to calm down a bit. And by God's providence through my friend on the other side of the world's recommendation, I ended up in Job. Kind of an odd place for me, I guess, I tend to stick to the NT, though I know I shouldn't, especially the Pauline stuff. But there was conviction here - and this is honestly what's made me decide to distance myself from tumblr a bit - I guess I realized more sharply that really, when was the last time which I allowed the Word of God to shape my thoughts on, well, anything? Instead of relying on my own, well informed or not so, reasons/reasoning/etc.

I don't know what all this will change. Both of the nights I have had since have been super duper odd in their own way. But something needs to.

Here's another thing I have been thinking about, something my friends and I discussed last night, about feeling like ourselves. One of my friends made a decision recently and told me that though it was hard, she was glad because she didn't realize how not-like-herself she had been feeling, until she made a change and then felt like herself again. THAT is the kind of thing I feel I desperately need.

Every since I moved to Oxford, the best way to describe what I have felt is simply "not myself". I don't know why, and I don't know how, but I'm just NOT. It feels like I left myself behind at JBU. With my friends, with my environment.

Maybe I've been trying to reinvent myself the whole time I've been here - with Rugby especially. But I don't think I need to reinvent myself. I need to go back to just being who I was. Improvements are great, of course, but what I feel is NOT an improvement. Who I am right now doesn't feel like an improvement.

I don't know what I need to do, i don't know what I need to change. It may be that I even make a really hard change - like, I hate to say this, but like giving up on rugby. It would certainly be the easiest in a sense, because it would be to stop tying myself to a discipline. I'm not sure it's the right decision, as I know it's done me good and it would do me good to continue a discipline, especially a physical one, so do not read this as a resignation, I'm just trying to think of things that could change. Because something should.

A song came into my head this morning, one I really love and seems applicable. It's Mumford & Sons's "Winter Wind". I've always considered it a bit of a break up song - but instead of a "I'm mad you broke up with me" song it's a "I am so sorry that I may have hurt you by breaking up with you" song. But for me of course, not being in any sort of romantic relationship, I guess it feels like this is my feelings toward Oxford. Which is really sad:

My head told my heart "Let love grow."
But my heart told my head "This time no."

There is even more to that song that I have always liked but never related to until now. Just go listen to it, I love that song. But the song doesn't offer much in the way of answers besides maybe "move on". I'm not sure I can do that right now.

These next few weeks will be me finishing up my first pair of BPhil essays for submission on the 20th, and starting to tuck into the suggested reading list I've received about my new subject, aesthetics. And trying to keep my head above the water, even though I know that this is even now the calm before a storm.

This term I need to figure out several things. There are questions of housing, questions of my dissertation, questions of what on earth I am doing this summer, etc. It's a bit overwhelming and it hasn't even begun. I've only been awake for 3 hours... I guess I should go buy some groceries or something.

Anyway, thanks for reading, as always. And seriously, go listen to Mumford & Sons.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below, prais eHim above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.