A day in the life, reprise

Now that i am back in Kingston, back in my lovely circa 1975 residence building with its vintage furniture and matress that i can really appreciate how bitter sweet the process of comming home really was. In fact to some degree it probably would have been easier to stay in Kingston the entire time, at least that way i would of gotten a lot more work done instead of having to sit here at 11 oclock at night trying to study for the calculus quizz that i have tomorrow before i star to freak out over my discrete algebra assignment while studying for my chemistry quiz with the pressence of midterms lurking over me. Yay university! They deffinately werent lying when they said that the work load would that much greater then what we had in higschool. At least in highschool i was only trying to juggle four courses at once, and i could barely do that... Oh well but this post isnt about this, or at least that isnt my intention but we will se where this takes me.

Once again on the topic of being home for the weekend. At first it was great, like i mentioned before hand my mother made me cookies and it seemed like everything that everyone said or did involved or implicated me in some sort of fashion. I was the gleaming example set forth for my brother, who i helped sort through a bunch of university catalouges this weekend, and i was the pride and joy of my parents, a trophy to show off in front of the relatives. And with that in mind it seemed as ifthe entire weekend was spent walking on eggshells. Everything was planned and premeditated, all the conversation was empty,it was just simply not my parents. Everything that was said or asked involved me, because everything this weekend selfishly involved me, but at the same time it did not. No matter what the topic Queen's university was attached as i took on the previously mentioned roles, as well as an ambasador for the higher education that my parents missed out on for their own sets of circumstances. So maybe they are proud of me and they do posses a genuine interest in what i am doing at Queens, or maybe, and this is what i am leaning towards, that like always they dont know and dont have anything else left to say or act. Of course all it is just a cover, to make up some awkward conversation in exchange for some awkward silence.

Awkward silence is perhaps what i was really looking forward most to about comming home but never really got. It seems that when i am here in res, i am constanly "on". Everything that i say or do has some sort of social consequence which will eventually come back to haunt me in some way or form later down the road. Fittingly enough it is with this topic that i decided to restart this journal, and here it is once again looking over me. Home isnt supose to be like that. At home i am supose to be able to hang around in my pajamas and not brush my hair and just generally be a slob, because no one should care if i do or not because you are under the belief that no one will thing differently of you if you do. The reason behind this attitude, you have lived with these people for the last 18 years of your life, no one knows you better then, and it feels kind of stupid admitting this, your family. You dont have to be on, to act better then you are simply because they kow you arent better then you are, and it is that kind of feeling that you will not find out in public, especially in residence. To be honest though, it felt like i was deprived of that feeling, the feeling that i was really looking forward to comming home to. I didnt want a hero's welcome, i wanted to be left alone, to be myself outside of the 5 by 8 cinderblock prison which constitutes my dorm, to not be a guest in my own home because thats how i have been living for the past month.

But at the same time, i did say the whole returning home was bittersweet. The bittersweet nature of comming home can be found in the fact that, even though the entire time it felt like i and everyone around me was walking on egges, at other times it was just as i had expected and imagined home would be. That of course is not reflecting on home in a positive light. As long as memory can serve, and as long as holidays ever have and ever will be celebrated in my family, and i am sure plenty of other families, there will always be some sort of bickering. I can only sit here and imagine, that as my family fell apart at the seems throughout the course of the weekend over such little things, about how many other families were doing the same thing, acting out domestic disputes of their own. Which on a side note makes me wonder why they close liquor stores on holidays when we need them the most. I know alcohol certainly would of made my weekend durring the fighting that much more barable, and i am sure it would of gone a long way in a lot more places then the chalmers residence. A typical example was my mother freaking out on my father over the fact that she told my brother to work the entire day when he could of gotten off early. Another one was when she started freaking out because she had misplaced the gravy, in front of company no less, embaracing not only herself but me as well through association. Embarassment through association, where you feel embarased for yourself through that of another is the worst kind of all, often associated with a knot deep down in the gut of ones stomach. So i sat there through all of this, i have sat through it for the past 18 yaers, silently reflecting inward trying to stay generally uninvolved. However this time the feelings were different. No time before my life was there an alterative to this situation, that i knew no better until today, the fact that i do have other places to be at home.

Even though the cinderblock cell which constitutes my res room can be confining it can also be liberating. Even though i am constantly on and under the scrutiny of the scrutiny of the social magifying glass, perhaps the worst thing to find yourself under reveiw by, there is still plenty of freedom associated with college life. Of course this freedom i only realized existed, or at least began to appreciate, upon returning home when it was taken away from me. Here i have the freedom to come and go as i choose, and most of all there is no one to answer to other then myself. I am the sole mediating factor regarding my life and what i do with it in Kingston, there is no one other then I to be held responsible for my actions, and there is no one else other then I to ask for premission. This is my house and i am living by my rules, now that i have my own "roof" to call "home". Most importantly though there are no arguments to listen to, or parents to pry, because they are always a phone call and a 300km drive away.

So once again i find myself sitting at a crossroads in my life, or at least a substantial bit of indecession on my opinion regarding it. On one hand i do miss home and i miss the creature comforts of my bed and my family, even though there are the issues that i have with them. On the other hand when i am home enjoying those creature comforts and my family i dont feel like i really am home and miss the sense of freedom that i have at university. Perhaps these are just mixed emotions associated with comming home for the first time, Christmas isnt that far away and with at least a two week break maybe i will find some more clairity once i get past the honeymoon period.