Just scared. Afraid of everything.

I really want to go home, but I'm afraid of going home too.

I want to escape from this place of confusion. Social dynamics are so weird here. To me at least. In fact, because it seems weird only to me that it is alll sooo weird...

I feel so uncomfortable. I don't know what to expect of people, I don't know what people mean. I don't know what they interpret from my words or actions. I can't understand people's responses anymore. I don't know what is expected of me. I can't seem to use the understanding of my own social patterns and norms here. I'm not sure if the intelligent academics here are just plain weird -- high IQ and low EQ -- or whether I am really a social oddball.

I feel like I'm living in a different plain of reality altogether. It's as if the law of social physics are totally different. I feel out of this world -- literally.

People are at times so warm, and the next instant so cold I wonder if I've said something wrong. Sometimes they are overfriendly, and I wonder if they thought I was flirting with them.

I seem to be interacting with machines here. Very good-looking, impressive and intellectually capable machines. However, most of them seem to have a bug in their programme that makes them socially incoherent and inconsistent.

This is how I feel, of course. I'm not saying that they really behave like machines. It's just that nothing seems to be making coherent sense to me here.

I was just looking through some old photos, particularly of Ly. In a way, I suddenly wish I could feel all that feelings of familiarity and warmth all over again. The thing is, even though I can remember how I was truly truly happy then, I can't see myself in those photos. Maybe I've put on so much weight now that I can't identify that girl in the picture as me. But somehow, she feels like someone so foreign.

That's why I am afraid of going home too. I can run from this place where I feel so unstable and in a way.. abstract... like I'm subliming -- in between solid and gas states, yet not liquid. I can run home. But when I run home, and if I still feel so out of place, I don't know of any other place to run to where I can find some sense of familiarity and comfort once again.