love in the time of chichhi

self realization while in Pakistan #whatever:

I am totally unselfconscious while here, which feels different, new. So, like it or not, I must be selfconscious in other circumstances, aka, my life in DC. The life that I've been internally pining for since wednesday. Around family, especially my mom's family, there is a certain level of comfort that I just don't feel anywhere else. Here I Am, Take Me Or Leave Me, though I know you won't leave me, even after our fierce verbal showdowns about my version of the good life vs. yours. I still worry a little around my friends that my humor will be unappreciated or politics will be annoying or my dietary choices too inconvenient. Here, even with the groans that come from the typical-zainab-longstoryshortpunchline-jokes, unending conversations on marriage and its discontents, and constant urgings to eat meat, I still feel at home. Yet, there is a slight discomfort. I realized today that I have fallen in love in Pakistan twice. Once at the age of 14, my first love, and once at the age of 20, my most recent love. So while in Pakistan, no matter what, I have strange, disconnected feelings of longing that has no place in the life that I now live. And I've forgotten the thrill of being in love. Of being in lurrrrrrrrrrve. Like you want to run home from class to see him, like you cannot bear to not be in the same room as him. Bliss. I talk a big talk, but I have to say, there is nothing like being in love. I miss that feeling.