There’s a thick fog covering my hometown. The intense dark is only broken by the reflection of orange streetlight in the mist, giving an eerie, quiet glow to the streets I used to know so well.

I drove through it in my new car, my beloved dog on my lap, as I went to pick up my take-out drunken noodles from my favorite local Thai place. I felt like I should have felt something.

I didn’t.

Since I’ve been home now, I feel like I’m not feeling anything right. In the past week I’ve gotten a job, I’ve gotten a car, and I’ve found a place to crash for my first month in Seattle. Rather than feeling happy that everything has fallen into place so nicely, I’m suspicious, and panicky, and quietly worried.

“It’s happening too fast.”

“It’s not supposed to be this easy.”

“Something has to go wrong.”

“They’ve made a terrible mistake in hiring me. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

…are all things that I’ve been repeating this past week.

I’m not normally this pessimistic, so I don’t know what’s going on there.

I feel like I should still be adjusting here after 10 months abroad. While I was there, my friends and I would speculate the different ways that we would be culture-shocked. So far, the only things that have been true are that I keep forgetting that I can flush the toilet paper and I tend to say inappropriate things really loudly because I forget that the people around me speak English and can understand me.

Instead, I sometimes forget that I was even living in Santiago. Are there really these people that exist, that I spent so much time getting to know?

While I’ve felt completely and utterly happy when all of my friends are gathered, such as at our New Year’s Eve party, outside of that I felt something missing. Something not quite right, that rubs me raw and drives me crazy. I can’t pinpoint it.

I just know that I’m feeling it all wrong.

I’m terrified of failing. I feel like there’s so much at stake, but there’s not.

I’m excited to move to Seattle. I desperately don’t want to leave my family here.

I’m completely at odds with myself.

Someone tell me how I should be feeling.