2004-12-27-1:18 a.m.
I've always found it strange that along with great happiness comes astounding sadness at its leaving. I went away for the week to a tropical paradise with some friends and had an amazing experience. All those pressures that seem to haunt me even in my sleep at home melted away with the rising of the sun in Punta Cana. People are different there, despite the abject poverty in which they live. No one complains about how much work they have to do or how hot the sun is that beats down on them. They enjoy what they have for as long as they have it, unlike most people here that I know who complain about even the smallest of freedoms of which others only dream. As much as visitng a third world country puts one's own life in to perspective, no one has been able to explain to me why I was so unhappy to leave it, why I still, a week later, get the urge to run as fast as I can to the nearest airport to get back there. I keep telling myself that to live there would never be the same as that week spent with my friends, but somehow my brain isn't connecting with my heart that yearns to go. Maybe it's not even necessarily that place that I need as much as any other place than this. I can't imagine leaving my family but every time I do leave them I find it more and more difficult to come back. I don't even miss who and what I left behind. Winter always tears apart my optimism and general good cheer. I suppose having had all that sunshine and relaxation merely reinforces what I'll be missing until summer, and drives home the realization of another long, bitterly cold, ice-ridden, below-zero Chicago winter yet to come. And just to stab the icicle deeper into my heart, the temperature when we landed that night was seventeen degrees. Welcome to Chicago!
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