i know what you are, but what am i?

the title of this post is stupid. for the purpose of full disclosure i'll just throw that out there. that's what somebody said to somebody else in my second grade classroom, and lots of gasps were exchanged and somebody else went and told the teacher, but i was clueless (i'm pretty sure this defined my childhood) because i didn't know what it means. and honestly, i still kind of don't, which i think says a lot about what i want to write about.
they say studying abroad changes you, you know, and when you come back home the place will be the same, but you will be different. but i think for this to work, you have to know yourself in a particular way. and i'll just admit that for someone who wants to do memoir for a living (that or the wnba, whichever's more feasible...) i don't know myself very well at all.
i do know this: before i came here i thought i didn't have a comfort zone.
i was down for anything. i was awkward and thus diffused awkward situations because i recognize the inherent awkwardness of them. i wanted danger and sometimes boundaries but always danger. i wanted the thrill of driving through a six-hour snowstorm to canada three months after getting my license. i wanted to challenge my body: to run faster, to drink more. i wanted to make Statements. i thought, the only thing holding me back is me.
when you live like this, you feel like anyone can throw anything at you, and you can take it. sometimes you need time and sometimes you need to vent because you're not perfect, never will be, but you always feel so...clutch. you creep dangerously close to deadlines but always make it in the end. that was what i knew about myself.
and then i came here. and this might play out like a dramedy, but so be it. here, every minute, every day, i feel a gleeful shirk of fear. sometimes, this fear manifests itself into manic excitement, happiness i can feel so deeply, pure awe at my surroundings. i am here and i am whole.
sometimes, not so much. sometimes i am crippled, sometimes i am floating in a rough haze. i do not speak the language, none of us really do, so we lean in, hard, on each other, waiting to be saved. when i tire of leaning in i reach out, to home, to what i knew before: my house at school, the faces of my friends as i remember them. sometimes i want to hug my mother, hold my cat, eat peanut butter. sometimes i want guido's tortilla chips and green mountain salsa. more than anything. there are times when, more than anything in the world, i want people from my old life. i want desperately to know how they are, what they are doing. because sometimes i feel like i need to be confirmed, my presence in this strange place needs to be externally recognized, because i sometimes don't believe it.
sometimes i can't imagine being here until may. sometimes i can't imagine leaving.
i think about the person i was, finding a routine 48 hours into college. i think about me now, curled up in my friend's bed, in the middle of an ocean, wondering if there is something inherently wrong with me. wondering why after three and a half weeks--that is almost a month, oh my god--i still feel so unanchored, so breezy. so different and lost but also found, in some way. so here, and so not. i exist but i don't. i mean, i don't know if i even exist here yet. how can i?

i know this is weird. i know people will read this and scratch their heads and wonder how the above could possibly align with the truth that i tell when i say i am having the time of my life. because i am.
i. am.