Things I'm doing with my enforced and unwillingly accepted free time

- Working on stories for my senior portfolio
- Writing new music
- Rereading old books
- Picking up new books
- Spending money I don't have
- Looking, fruitlessly, for an in-the-meantime job
- Getting frustrated

          I feel selfish and stupid for complaining about being home. I keep wanting the town at school to be okay, only partly for the sake of the people and businesses there, but also admittedly for my own personal wishes. I want to go back.
          I'm not a very good person in that respect.
          Even though I saw the floodwater up to the eaves of houses, it still doesn't really feel real. I helped sandbag last week. There were hundreds of volunteers, and we passed sandbags from hand to hand, building up levees and hoping it would help while knowing it probably wouldn't. That was real enough. But driving past on the interstate on my way back home, seeing entire buildings submerged, the tops of trees emerging like low shrubbery from the foamy murk (which you could, by stretching the word to the breaking point, call water), was incomprehensible. I took in the fact that this was what was happening, that there were buildings destroyed and homes ruined. I was shocked and sympathetic and horrified, but all on an intellectual level. It didn't, hasn't really struck me.
          It hasn't become personal. Which is a stupid reason to not feel something. I can think about the devastation and I can think, "That's terrible." But that's where things remain, all cerebral.
          Nothing is really all that personal, though. Right now, I feel like I'm half-existing. I've been moving along along one line, living life one way, and now that I'm home, I feel suspended. Put on hold, with nothing to do but wait it out. All of my actions have been pushed back - I can't do anything constructive.
          I want to go back to school and help in the cleanup. To be doing something physical. Cleaning up, repairing damage done by the water, isn't the line that I'd expected to be following this summer, but at least it fits in the same plane. It's the right frame of existence. Being home in comfort is more jarring to me than being in the disrupted and chaotic midst of the flood.

          I mentioned to my parents that I wanted to go back to school. Maybe I should have put it differently - "I'm going crazy being stuck here" might have been a little tactless. They took offense, asked if I disliked them or were doing something that was driving me away. (Is this a weird reaction for my parents to have had? My best friend tells me it is, but it was one I expected from them as soon as the words were out of my mouth.)
          I had to explain to them that I just don't live at home anymore. I haven't, in my heart, considered my parent's house my home since I left for college. This isn't an unusual sentiment, of course. But it's one my parents haven't seemed to be able to grasp. It probably has something to do with me being the youngest, the only girl, and 'the good kid.'
          I guess I'm not really saying anything here. Profundity and insight seem to be escaping me in recent weeks.
          According to the school's emergency website, they're optimistic that the school will open shortly. Of course, they've gone through this whole situation being relentlessly optimistic and cheerful, so set on assuaging worry and preventing fear that they've forgotten about things like pragmatism, honesty, and sensibility.
          Complaining. Add that to the list of things I've been doing.
          I gotta find something to occupy my time.