I miss Liberia. I got email from Sylvester today, and Doug is there, and all I want to do is jump on a plane and get there already. I miss it so much I can smell it. Smoky charcoal cook fires, diesel fuel, garbage rotting on the beach. I can taste the food. The food I hate. Cold French fries and red gravy on rice. Stale Pringles and spaghetti with hot dogs. I can feel the small dark hands gripping my hands, my arms, my hair. Pressing ever closer. Heat radiating from their little bodies, combining with the sun and the watery air and the surf to turn into the sweat that rolls down my back. Songs echoing off concrete walls. The roar of the surf and the wind and the rain. The loudness of the silence when the generator cuts off at night. The complexity of the issues that keep me awake all night with their solutions just out of reach.

I have just over three weeks until school is done (DONE!) and all I want to do is cry. I’m feeling so pressed on every side right now. Projects due for school. Another appraisal on the house. Slipping in a few shifts at work to pay bills. Trying to learn how to be a nurse. Trying to find a job. Planning birthday parties and vacations and stolen moments with family. A million changes ahead in a just a few short weeks. I hate change even when I’ve looked forward to it for months and months. The lack of familiarity unsettles me, even when I've engineered it. It's a control thing.

I’m just so tired. So unbelievably, incredibly tired. I know I will make it through this, that I will make it to graduation and residency and a job. Will it get easier? Please tell me it will get easier. Will I someday be good at this job? Will I know what I’m doing? Will I go to work with the peace of knowing I am competent? The whole idea of being the expert instead of the novice is so appealing to me right now, and so far away. I am so tired of not knowing what to do. Tired of being treated like a child. Tired of having to ask a million questions every day. So tired. I want to get on a plane and sleep for 18 hours and land in Liberia. I want to be tired for different reasons. Satisfying reasons.

Not this year.

It’s obvious I need sleep. I’m going to bed now.