I wonder about myself sometimes.

Something weird has been happening to me recently. Something that seems out of place, given where I am in life. It's been weighing on my hugely for about a month now.

I'm severely homesick for Ukraine.

What?

It's true. Even though I've been back in the States for almost 2 years now (HOW did that happen?), I feel like I'm all of a sudden doing a lot of the processing that I guess I never did when I first returned. I don't know if it has to do with the fact that we're about to move or what, but it's making me legitimately sad on a regular basis. Is it normal to process a transition like this so long after the fact?

Some of the things I've been missing most:

Relationships. I miss my friends. Nastia, Ira, Tanya, Maya, Vika, Nataly. I miss them all.

Memory-making (for lack of a better word). I have extremely fond memories of time spent walking all over Poltava, eating ice cream in the underground mall, visiting for the weekend with other IMB folks, going on mystery excursions with Nastia, participating in outings with the youth group, watching movies with friends in my house, working alongside the Rowlands. Some of those memories became somewhat transformative in my life.

Food. I have several Ukrainian comfort foods: pelmeni, goluptsi, and vareneki come to mind immediately.

I miss my apartment; it was a hub for lots of gatherings and heart-to-heart conversations. I miss my church (even though the constant Russian made my head hurt). I miss the paths I would walk to my various destinations. I miss celebrating all the holidays in May.

Even before we had decided on our next big move (Boston), I started feeling the heaviness of missing Ukraine. Maybe there's a name for this syndrome/disorder/complex? Perhaps the two-years-later-time-release-syndrome or the can't-seem-to-untangle-the-past-from-the-present disorder or maybe the Facebook-makes-me-miss-Poltava-so-much-that-I-can't-look-at-pictures complex.

If anybody else is suffering from TYLTRS or CSTUTPFTPD or FMMMPSMTICLAPC, don't worry. I'm working on a remedy. So far, all I have is the must-go-back-think-Brad-will-mind? solution.

It's a work in progress.

Or perhaps I'm the work in progress...