I went back to my home. It was snowing and it was full of people I love and I brought Tim with me and everything was perfect, except not getting much sleep. I got perfect Christmas presents and bought lots of books. I stayed up all night and ate chicken finger subs. I spent lots of necessary time with cats. The angel chimes whirled above the mantle. We slept in a warm, high bed. I learned a new hip hop song about diving into a swimming pool of liquor. A la Lara, drink as immersion. We ate well every night, and mostly trekked through the dry cold and the beautiful falling snow, except when Tim drove us around in my mother's car. Everything felt right.

Oddly, I can only call both places home. I went home!! I'm going back home tomorrow. How better to distinguish?

I have submitted three of my four applications to graduate school. This is a secret from some people. I have been blase about, if dedicated to, this process, since I began it eight months ago, but now that it is becoming more tangible I am getting nervous. Will I even get in anywhere, and how crushed will I be if I don't. How am I going to juggle the financial and tick tock clock decision process. Do I really want to stay or go or what. Neither and both. I want real winters and hardwood floors and intricate woodwork, I want to be near people I love who are not also oddly distant. And I want also to be with mountains and asiago rosemary omelettes and to on-call at my shelter and most of all I want to be with my partner who, increasingly, I cannot imagine being far from. I want to be done with my job now. I want the cold rain to end. I want the moths out of the pantry. I want to stop hiding in my room. I want to stop spontaneously crying. I have noticed that I am happier anywhere else, as I was in Buffalo, Montana, Minnesota. Maybe I will never be happy where I am for longer than two years. And maybe I just need to search old and new landscapes, following my clusters of people or idle notions around, until I find the perfect place.

Once during my worst summer I was walking around the bookstore barefoot in paint stained pants that I had to pull up every two minutes. My mothers maternity pants. I compensated for having to wear pantyhose and being generally well-groomed at my other job in this way. I was playing GIMME DANGER LITTLE STRANGER.

I AM HAVING AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS I said too loudly. A customer heard me and said Could you dial it back from existential crisis, already? You are just 22. You're not old enough for a crisis. I thought what do you know, because I had had two already. But also yeah, you are probably right. Not the existential kind. Not yet.

The cynic in me always laughs bitterly when I am restless. Existential crisis! She says ironically. Then I put myself in place. People who know what they're doing when they're 25 aren't living right. I am calm, I am peace.

This morning, Chris and I were talking about what a "typical workday" is like. Last night, someone asked me if they could pee on my butt! Someone else rapped a whole Ludacris rap to me. There was a guessing-the-age-of-staff contest in which I revealed nothing. And also, I had my first long talk with the youth who overdosed in the bathroom since that happened (May). He said, thank you, by the way, for saving my life. That is the most scared I have ever been. You're welcome, I said. I can't even imagine. I am so glad we were there. I am so glad you weren't alone. I did not say, it was also the most scared I have ever been. Or, I decided to change my life because of you.

We bury things.