10 weeks from right now, I will be at home in Massachusetts, most likely getting ready to eat dinner.
I hate looking forward to the next chapter instead of living in the moment, but to be honest, the present is kind of boring. I don't have any updates about my work, and I still have the rest of May to get through before my incredible line-up of guests come to visit in June.
I guess it makes sense to feel ready for transition at this point; for the past four years of my life, the first weekend in May meant the end of school and the beginning of summer. Granted, it's been "summer" in Savannah since like February, but I think seeing the Facebook statuses of my friends getting ready for graduation and other adventures has me longing to also get going on my new journey. Besides, I signed a lease in Atlanta last week, so I feel like I have one foot out the door even though I still have so much time left here. And although I'm sure June and July are going to fly by, May just seems SO long.
I think the other part of my antsy-ness is that I just don't like living in Savannah. I feel very isolated here, and lately my feelings of not belonging have been exacerbated by the incredible conservatism that I've never witnessed before this year.
As an example, after Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday, a sign on one of the main streets in Savannah was changed to say "Osama is no more. US military...score. We will never forget 9/11." Sure, Savannah is a military town and almost every sign here says something along the lines of "We love the military! Go USA!". But the way people were talking about the conclusion to this almost-ten-year-old mission made me want to throw up. It was if everyone was blind to the trillions of dollars spent and the thousands of innocent lives lost to capture one man. And it's not like that money was being used to further understand why people like members of al Qaeda hate the U.S. so much. The U.S. military doesn't focus on how to create better-educated and better-developed communities, even though every research article regarding development demonstrates the correlation between violent crimes and poverty/its counter-parts.
I realize that Savannah is not the only city in the U.S. that was blindly celebrating the death of bin Laden. In fact, most of the northeast was party central, claiming that it made up for those feelings of horror that I remember so clearly from September 11, 2001. Watching clips of celebrations in some of my favorite cities made my stomach churn, but it was at least good to see some well-written responses to those celebrations. Here in Georgia, I felt like I had no one to even converse with about the topic without being accused for the umpteenth time this year of being a communist hippie.
So, the countdown is on. I imagine I'll eventually get nostalgic about leaving MVC, but right now I'm just way too excited about going home and seeing my friends and family.
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