So I've arrived at my new home. My Mom left this morning, and it was a lot harder than I was expecting. Being on my own, with no support system to speak of, is a lot harder than I was expecting.

My last semester of undergrad, I moved from the local, smaller campus where I had been for all of the previous semesters to the larger, flagship campus about 40 minutes away. My first day was terrible. I had been out late the night before and had only gotten about 4 hours of sleep. It was unbelievably hot, and the commuter bus I took was crowded and lacked air conditioning. I got lost. One of my syllabi was misprinted and I walked into the wrong class, late. I then realized that I was in the wrong classroom, but it was unbelievably too late to make it to the first class, so I walked across campus to visit a grad student friend who was not in his office. I then walked more across campus (it's several square miles) to my next class, only to discover that the class I thought was my second class was, in fact, my first class, which I had missed entirely and I had JUST enough time to book it back across campus to what I had thought was the first class. In 115+ degree weather. In a place where I knew no one and had no friends. It was a disaster. It was a terrible day. And the only reason I had taken the extra semester was to get myself to the point where I could more easily get into a program like the one I'm in now. Today was a much worse day than that day was. That day, at least I knew I had people when I finally made it home. I had people who cared about me and would make it better. Here, I am overwhelmingly alone. Yes, I have a roommate, and yes, she and her family are perfectly nice, but they are perfect strangers. I miss the gridsystem of my home town. I have no idea where anything is here, and being lost, on the wrong side of town, is panic-inducing. I have no one to call to rescue me when my GPS leads me astray, or when I'm suddenly on a freeway I didn't know was a freeway. Or when a road curves unexpectedly and becomes another road, which becomes a freeway, then curves again and becomes the original road again. No, I am not exaggerating. That is literally the geographic shitstorm that is this town.

I miss my family. I miss my friends. I miss decent Mexican food. I miss grocery stores that sell tequila instead of pickled eggs. I miss my car. I miss dry heat. I miss my bed. I miss not having to buy everything new and having no money. I miss KNOWING the people around me. I miss my refrigerator that allows easy access for gallon-sized jugs (they get stuck in this one).

And I am trying really, really hard to not hate it here. I am trying to remember where everything is. I tried to be all calm and chill when my car broke literally 5 minutes after I got the keys. I tried to calmly find my way back to something I recognized when I got lost. I thought about going out tonight with some people from the program, I really did. But I am so alone, and I am so sad, and I just didn't know it was going to be this hard, so I just stayed home and ate this and watched this on Netflix. Neither really helped.

I'm sure, that like my experience at the flagship campus, I will eventually be glad I made the decision to come here. And I know that I will eventually not get lost every single time I leave my apartment. And I will make a friend or two. But right now, it's really hard to imagine that day.