I am back at JMU for Spring semester, and I am sad.

Not that I don't like being at JMU, I just hate the limbo of travel days and sometimes get depressed when I'm closer to having been home than I am to going home again.

Right now my suite is empty, which is just as well. We don't talk, except Doug and I, and while that is fun I often feel like I'm his last resort friend. Then again, he's my last resort too. I just fall back to my last resort more frequently than he does.

My solemnness is not about JMU or my suite, it is the lie of the spring. It says spring semester, but it is winter. It is cold and dark and unfit for much of anything other than lying around at home. Winter is a great time to hide, to be alone and to cultivate some sort of experience or outlook on life that is wholly unique and private. I loved being at home for winter break, and was sad to leave. But I did leave, because it was time for spring semester, a time for growth and expansion and for new beauty to spring up from the death of old things. Spring serves an important purpose, and I look forward to it. But clearly, it isn't spring yet.

There are a good number of parts of my past that have, or currently are dying peacefully in the frozen winter weather. Spring allows new life to replace the old, worn out days. And so Spring semester is something to look forward to, since it may naturally fill out a life that currently feels lacking and unused. But I am not ready to surrender to death those last bits that winter must take, and I am not in the midst of new life blossoming in the social or physical sense.

It is undeniably still Winter.

I cannot live as though it were Spring when in actuality it is not. And this depresses me, because either I am in the wrong place or it is the wrong time. When I arrived and unpacked and said goodbye to my parents (which hurts much more than I'll ever let them know) I pulled out my daily planner and opened it. It was on the last page I had been on, the whole month calendar of December. The last thing written was a simply circled "HOME!" and I could barely calm down.

I wish I were still Home. I wish it was still Spring and this could grow to be my home. But for now, and possibly for quite a while, I feel alone, sad, and like I should crawl under a blanket and hide.