Analyzing it all...(It's a pessimist's view!)

So the time has come...
It was a forced effort to start this entry, mainly because I couldn't contemplate the prospect of staying with my eyes wide open staring at the ceiling. I thought to myself "You've been procrastinating for so long! You promised to blog about the experience of being in Canada! It's been almost five months for God's sake!" But the moment never seamed right, and the itching sensation never came. It's only my fear of my wandering mind that drove me to the keyboard, and I don't like that, but that's the way it is.
So, what should I say? I've paid my respects to many people who were absolutely wonderful, and more people came along who deserve to be mentioned, and for them I'll dedicate a separate entry. But the point here is to sum up the experience, then dissect it into little pieces that relate to different themes, and the words that could sum up the experience are wonder, loneliness, pain, distraction, and focus.
They say that you can find seven benefits in travel, and I'll try to count what I think was beneficial for me, because these would constitute the wonderful things that I could find here. I've met new friends, wonderful friends. I've learned that I can count on myself in many things and can survive on my own if need calls. I've learned to talk a foreign language without trying to pass my thoughts through a "mental translator." I've seen new places, and wonderful places. I've learned how much I'm missed by my family and friends. I've gained very valuable academic exposure to the latest in my field of study, and hope to be even more exposed to more valuable knowledge if time allows me to. But the most important thing I've learned is how disillusioned I found myself to be; I'm not wide-eyed with awe of a new country and a new culture, the American movies made an excellent job making almost every aspect of north-American life well-understood. I don't see the society here as a Utopia; I see it as a country with its pros and cons. My home country also has its pros and cons, although many people would disagree and even be appalled at the mere idea of saying that the two countries are comparable :D Well, I'm not saying they are, but I still love my country and want to go back and try to do good.
The first night I stayed here I was hit with a sense of abstraction that I cannot really describe, it's as if I was hovering in the air with an empty gut; a sick feeling I get sometimes when I wake up in the morning and see the ten o'clock sun, and I'm not a morning person, so I hate the ten o'clock sun of a working day! I don't know how to describe this feeling, but it was as if I wasn't there, and someone else has taken this giant leap. Was I really in a time zone different than me 24 hours ago? Have I moved back in time and just added a couple of hours to my time on this earth?! I couldn't tell, but the creeks of wood were making me feel warm yet getting on my nerves! I kept looking outside and saying "What have you done you stupid $%##&! What exactly do you hope to do here? Work? Run away? Take a time off?" The answers to all three exclamations is still to be fully determined, but they're still looming over my head waiting for their fulfillment.
The next day to my arrival was a Sunday, so I couldn't go to the school and meet anyone. I took a small map, and took off, wandering in the streets of the city expecting to see a downtown bustling with people and action, but it was a quiet and easy-going downtown. After three hours of walking all over the place, I was hit with a lonely feeling that I've never experienced before. It wasn't a nice thing, and it made me wonder, how can a person be lonely all his or her life? Without anyone to lean on or seek comfort from?! It was a depressing thought in a depressing day, and it took all the possible joys my mind tried to conjure!
When my supervisor saluted me in Arabic the next day, I was ecstatic, and a sense of safety calmed me and made me feel that I'll be ok, that I can still be strong and get something out of the grayness that seamed to color my coming here. I considered work my sanctuary, and thought to myself "There's the one thing you have to do, and you have to do right. Run away all you want, take a time off as much as you want, but the bottom line is your work, so do it right!"
Then came the pain, as I sobered up and began to realize that I'm not "there" while not completely feeling that I'm "here." I walk down the streets and see that I'm in a completely different place, and yet it doesn't set in! It doesn't relate to the fact that almost all the lab members are Arabs, it's something different, as if I'm in a surreal dream or something! Although I saw the snow for the first time, I still couldn't grasp the fact that I'm here. I felt I was going crazy! I thought I'd be in awe of the place, it's a new place with this historic aura that I love, but my mind still couldn't make the connection. I was struggling within myself to find any possible joy, but the only joy I could find was while hanging out with the people I've met, and I lost the drive to explore and see the beauty in my surroundings. It was really a bad sign that my days and nights are turning into hell, and they did! I felt no desire to go and do things, and it was painful to even breath! Then I began to analyze this, and it came down to two simple facts; you can't enjoy a paradise alone, let alone a nice town, and you can't truly enjoy a paradise without a soul mate, may that be a true friend or a true love. Some people can do things by themselves and be content, I don't find this ability in me anymore. I thought I could pass as a loner, a free spirit, but every time I found myself alone with my thoughts I felt that they were coming out of my head, materializing into a creepy monster that wants to swallow me! It was so potent a feeling that I'd jump up and run!
Sometimes I blamed myself for not being able to find the good sides of my stay here, but hard as I tried to put myself in a positive mindset, it worked for a short time and then I'd go back to square one (or more befitting, square zero!) So I kept myself busy as much as I could, with friends, at the lab, in the streets, whatever was available. I thought it was pitiful of me to be this dependent on external parameters to distract me instead of resurrecting my internal power; the power I always prided myself on being able to bring to life at the time of crisis, and this was a crisis indeed; because I became obsessed with trying to figure out what's wrong (besides the personal issues that I had to deal with!) Why am I not doing things right? No work is done, no joy is felt, no fun is planned, even when I began playing the piano, it didn't make me jump up and down, because I kept thinking about how daunting it is to learn everything in a short time.
The closer I got to becoming crazy, the more I cried, the more I became anxious, the more I performed poorly, the more depressed I felt, the more I annoyed people around me with my pathetic depressing mood swings! I prayed to God that it stops, that he gives me the power to cut through this vicious circle that's completely unjustified in my opinion. The solution was to regain the focus: "What is it exactly that you want to do?" It came down to one basic point: you have to do your work the right way. Friends, fun, and piano are the helping environment, not the goal. They're the wonderful parameters that keep you somewhat sane and functioning, but they shouldn't be the point. I've been obsessed with analyzing people and dynamics around me, and with thinking about leisure as if this was a trip or something, and with being a new Mozart. These things are great, but they're not why I came here. I came here to do a specific job, and go back to people that I shouldn't forget, and an ambition that I shouldn't give up, and a life of loneliness that I should really start to adapt myself to.
Admittedly, the focus stage is still jumping back and forth at the back of my mind, but I'm hoping that it'll come around once these extreme feelings of everything around start to wane. Hopefully soon, I'll begin to deploy this focus stage with full force, because God know I need to wake up and realize I'm not in a dream!
I hope the upcoming entries will be promising and not as gloomy!