B'More in Baltimore

How can you challenge yourself to "be more" when you don't even know how to "be"?

My grandmother passed away Tuesday and I don't know how to get through this. I wish I could be home with my family - trying to support them and having their support, being with people who get it. Instead I'm stuck here. I can't leave the country on such short notice because of immigration stuff (well, I could leave...but then I wouldn't be able to get back into the country for several weeks if not a month).

I struggle being around people. It's exhausting to keep it together, to act normal, to smile. I hear myself talking but it's not me. I hear myself laughing but it feels hollow. Everything can trigger me these days - someone asking how I'm doing, a speaker mentioning the word "family", someone talking about "mentors" and the people who have helped us get where we are today.

I know some people think I don't care about my family because I've put an entire ocean between us. But if there's one thing I've learned this past week is that it's easy to be away from your family when you know they're doing alright and when you know you can see them again some time. But when you know you'll never get to hug your grandma again, never get to sit in the kitchen and chat with her while she's cooking or doing the dishes (and insists that you really don't need to help), never have her tell you again how amazing you are....

I wanted to go home this winter break but I couldn't - because of immigration stuff. I hated it, but I figured, if I work winter break, at least I'll be able to take some more time off in the summer and then be home for a little longer. I never thought it'd be too late.

I always told myself that I'd figure out this visa stuff soon and then I'd be able to go home whenever I needed to, that I'd be able to be there for my family when they needed me. But I failed.

Sometimes I wonder - if I could go back, would I do this again? Would I choose to leave my family and get invested in a profession that doesn't really exist in my home country - therefore making it impossible to do what I want to do and be close to home? If I'd never known what Student Affairs was, I couldn't have fallen in love with it....

We talk about globalization and giving our students a more international experience. But what we don't tell them is that if they leave their country and find a job somewhere else, they will spend a lifetime struggling with immigration issues - they will never truly fit into the country they've moved to because they'll always be the immigrant, the foreigner - but they also won't fit into their old world anymore because they will have changed too much - so in the end, they'll be alone and misunderstood wherever they go. And when it really counts - when you need your family and they need you - you'll be stuck far away in a foreign country all by yourself....