Marecki on 4/7/2007 at 22:33

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Back. In an act of desperation I have decided to fly back to Los Angeles for another five days, as the perspective of spending the Independence Day alone in Berkeley was too horrifying and the boss won't be around for the next two days anyway. This is probably the last time in the near future I will be able to do that, so why not take advantage of it, eh? Especially considering I am completely useless at work in my present state.

True, home is where you make it; that's why I could have got two homes now, one in Warsaw and one in LA, plus telling the truth I don't like being in Warsaw that much either. However, the difference between me and most of you who have posted is, it seems all of you have made the big move together with your loved ones, whereas I came alone and to a place I know nobody at. It's almost always been like that and it has almost always made things harder for me.

The truth is, even though I started feeling bad right after getting to the airport, everything turned for the better almost moment I landed in LA and met my fiancee again. I spent six days here, perfectly happy, and I thought that, for the first time in my life, I managed to avoid the anxiety phase. No such luck, though - I started feeling bad the moment I got to Berkeley on Monday and have been going downhill ever since - for the record, coming back to LA didn't help much - with occasional breaks of late evenings (I am one of those rare people who feel worse in the mornings than in the evenings). And mind you, that's with me coming back to a place I have already been to and with a weekend with my fiancee scheduled for just 11 days ahead... Therefore, this time I would say my primary distress is tied to leaving LA rather than Warsaw and the latter is just "catching a ride" on the primary surge of anxiety, an experience not uncommon to me.

It gets worse, though. While I can pester my fiancee and my parents about how bad I feel, this is not the way to go in the long run - that's what specialists are for. However, with my meager income (I am supposed to work for 40 hours a week, but get paid for 18) and no benefits from the employer (for those not in the loop, I am officially employed as a student assistant at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - which means that I am not eligible for most lab benefits because am not regular staff but don't get them covered by the university because I'm not a UCB student) I have pretty much no chance of signing up for proper mental care... It was much different in Europe for me. The same applies to visiting my fiancee more frequently, even with the tickets bought at the lowest fare it's still quite a bunch of money. I cannot of course work to get some extra cash, no thanks to the stupid US government and their visas.

Last but not least, there is the tricky matter of the nature of my work. You see, I work for two independent projects, only one of whom allows me to be in the US. The problem is, while the European project doesn't mind me working on the US one (although they would of course be happier to see me working for them exclusively), this doesn't work the other way around; as ironically enough the European project gives me much greater chances to graduate in reasonable future, this means I have to work on it in secret. This will of course come to my American boss' knowledge at some point, probably no later than in October, and I'm not looking forward to what will be happening then even though my Polish (i.e. real) bosses have ensured me they would "handle the matter"; there is a chance I will even get kicked out of LBNL and back to Poland, an outcome I am not sure whether it would be good or bad. Last but not least on the subject: telling the truth, if I didn't have my fiancee stuck in Los Angeles for another year I probably wouldn't have come back to the US in the first place.

In short, I have taken my chances with something immensely complicated and now I've got serious doubts about whether I can pull it off. There is no way for me to work in LA unless I drop the research altogether and get a job, which would of course introduce a lot of further problems such as getting an appropriate visa or being worried whether I can perform there well enough. Staying in Berkeley does not, as it has turned out, doesn't make the distance any more bearable by it being small because this time I seem to feel it in binary terms, either there is distance or there is not, and even putting abandoned friends aside (which is not a small thing to do, as I don't make new friends easily) being there is to some extent worse, as I can't get all the help I feel I need that was available to me in Poland or most parts of Europe. I am seriously considering setting myself a deadline for getting to feel better, in a month or so, after which I would simply return to Poland. Would it help? I don't know, but it would definitely make things less complicated for the time being.

The funny thing is, in a few weeks I will probably be fine and happy with everything. For now, however, it still feels like dying over and over again... At least I'll lose some weight.

And maybe I really should try getting healthy before attempting stunts such as this. On the other hand, what if I can never become cured?

Yakoob on 5/7/2007 at 09:20

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This is interesting... I left warsaw some 4 years ago and now I go to college an hour from LA heh. I don't miss "home" at all, though, never had any life there. My college life is much more meaningful and I am actually finding myself realing missing it, now that I have to stay with my parents over summer in Arizona.

Well, I haven't really said much in terms of advice but saw something familiar so I thought I'd pitch in...