I feel drunk with tiredness. For a normal-length week, this week has felt interminably long. I guess it makes sense that I would be particularly tired this week. I probably never quite caught up from having arrived back home at 12:30 a.m. Monday morning.
There were Multiple Things going on tonight, but I ditched all but the quiet of dinner with a friend because, as I said to a different friend when we were talking about maybe doing something, "I am too tired to be nice to people, and I don't have to be nice to you."
I woke up this morning from that deep dead sleep, the one from which it feels nearly impossible to claw your way to being awake and upright. It does not help that it's still dark when I wake up. I know that I am dwelling on this darkness, but it feels so fundamental. Something is missing, and that something is light. I think I need to move back to the tropics. I do not miss the changing seasons when I live in Africa. In fact, when I lived in Rwanda, I felt personally affronted when the weather back in Michigan was nice. My mom would tell me that it was 80 degrees F and sunny in Michigan and I would think, "Hey! That's my weather. You are supposed to have cold and snow and rain."
I woke up every day to sunshine in Rwanda.* I slept until I woke up, and I usually woke up around the same time every day, without an alarm clock, feeling rested. Ditto in Sudan. There is something about going to bed in the dark and waking up when it gets light that feels very natural.
I think I've just convinced myself to move back to the tropics. This northern weather is for bears and raccoons and mammals that can hibernate. Not for people. There is a reason humanity came to be in the tropics.
The summers here are glorious. Everyone tells me how the summers in Gone West make the winters worthwhile, but I'm not convinced that the trade-off is adequate, not when I know that there are places in the world where you can have that gloriousness all year long. In the summer, as we sit outside at cafes, I find myself thinking, "Yes, this is nice, but in Rwanda you can do this all year long. It's never 100 degrees, and it's never 40 degrees. It's just always a happy, beautiful medium." I have to find a way to get back to that. I was not intended to live way up north here. I need some sunshine, year round. Hawaii? Hm.
* Okay, not quite every day. It was mostly-sunny about 350 days a year in Kibuye. And then about 250 of those days it would rain for an hour or two in the afternoon or evening, and then it would be sunny again. I really miss that.
There were Multiple Things going on tonight, but I ditched all but the quiet of dinner with a friend because, as I said to a different friend when we were talking about maybe doing something, "I am too tired to be nice to people, and I don't have to be nice to you."
I woke up this morning from that deep dead sleep, the one from which it feels nearly impossible to claw your way to being awake and upright. It does not help that it's still dark when I wake up. I know that I am dwelling on this darkness, but it feels so fundamental. Something is missing, and that something is light. I think I need to move back to the tropics. I do not miss the changing seasons when I live in Africa. In fact, when I lived in Rwanda, I felt personally affronted when the weather back in Michigan was nice. My mom would tell me that it was 80 degrees F and sunny in Michigan and I would think, "Hey! That's my weather. You are supposed to have cold and snow and rain."
I woke up every day to sunshine in Rwanda.* I slept until I woke up, and I usually woke up around the same time every day, without an alarm clock, feeling rested. Ditto in Sudan. There is something about going to bed in the dark and waking up when it gets light that feels very natural.
I think I've just convinced myself to move back to the tropics. This northern weather is for bears and raccoons and mammals that can hibernate. Not for people. There is a reason humanity came to be in the tropics.
The summers here are glorious. Everyone tells me how the summers in Gone West make the winters worthwhile, but I'm not convinced that the trade-off is adequate, not when I know that there are places in the world where you can have that gloriousness all year long. In the summer, as we sit outside at cafes, I find myself thinking, "Yes, this is nice, but in Rwanda you can do this all year long. It's never 100 degrees, and it's never 40 degrees. It's just always a happy, beautiful medium." I have to find a way to get back to that. I was not intended to live way up north here. I need some sunshine, year round. Hawaii? Hm.
* Okay, not quite every day. It was mostly-sunny about 350 days a year in Kibuye. And then about 250 of those days it would rain for an hour or two in the afternoon or evening, and then it would be sunny again. I really miss that.
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