And sometimes, you can't make it on your own

It will behoove me to refrain from writing everything I'd like to about the things going on here. Suffice it to say that all is not well, that I've been introduced swiftly to the downside of being a graduate student, that every day I spend without the husband proves harder than the last.

I know sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the regular cycles of being abroad and actual depression; I think I'm really just hovering somewhere in between right now. Fortunately, these things tend to clear up quickly -- at this point, just finding a satisfying, cheap vegetarian meal made my evening brighter.

It helps to have friends outside the strange, inexplicably convoluted University that currently controls my right to existence. I've also taken great pleasure in gathering with other graduate students in my college for wine, wine, cocktails and eardrum-bursting rounds of karaoke. They understand me, anyway.

I'm trying to maintain a sense of humor about this whole thing, because what else am I going to do? I will NOT let this consume my life, at least not to the point where I can no longer remember what life's like outside the university (a problem, alarmingly, for many students who've grown up in this insular system). Still, it's been one of the most trying weeks I've ever endured -- I'm behind on sleep, emotionally ragged and feeling less and less sure about my place here. I miss my city, my Seattle. Part of me keeps fantasizing about purchasing a one-way to Oxford and hopping on the bus with my suitcases haphazardly packed. Subsequently, the rest of me looks around and sees this ragtag community of frazzled grad students, and it loves the way we bond over sickly sweet port and tales of academic woe. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I guess this is the part of grad school I neglected to consider: it's so much more than just going back to school.