Living life out of a suitcase

Sometimes I feel like I have spent the last 2 years of my life living out of these damn things.
I spend my weekends at home with my family and the rest of the week at uni in Southampton. On top of this during the week at uni I split my time between my own house that I share with 3 of my friends and my boyfriends flat that he shares with a friend.

All this moving around is exhausting and means that I constantly have little idea where most of my possessions are. The only way to keep track of them is to haul them around with me. Hence the living out of a suitcase situation.

Now the down side of this I feel very conflicted a lot of the time. I never feel properly settled or at home anywhere. My friends have started getting annoyed that I don't spend enough time with them (although that's a whole separate blog post). I imagine that this is how children whose parents are separated and split their time between them must feel.

Unfortunately I am not really sure how to get myself out of my current predicament as by stopping this endless hopping around I have to choose who I am going to spend less time with.
Spending less time with my family is out of the question. We have always been very close and I need to escape for a dose of their own unique brand of craziness on a regular basis.
Also my love for the countryside is deep rooted and sometimes living in such an urban environment can feel suffocating. I just feel an overwhelming urge to escape and all I want to do is to go home.

But I also love the independence uni gives me and the freedom to be my own person. My friends are great and I always have such a laugh with them but they can't replace my actual family. So I go home when I want and try not to let their complaints upset me. Even though it does hurt when they accuse me of not spending enough time with them or that I'm pathetic for wanting to spend time with my family. I wish they could see the struggle I have to try and make this hectic lifestyle of mine work.

My boyfriend is the person that connects all these different parts of my life and I'm not ashamed to admit he is my rock in many ways. When I get upset about this, he is the person who listens. He is often the person caught in the middle who has to accept that I have other commitments. He never complains about this and for that I am grateful.We already have many constraints on the time we can spend together what with work and uni and spending time with him makes me happy. If I were to cut back on the already limited time I get to spend with him then I would be risking our happy relationship.

I've come to realise that stressing about this is ultimately pointless as I am not prepared to change what I am doing. This might be selfish of me but I think I should be allowed the choice to spend time with the people I want without being made to feel guilty. The plus side of this mental lifestyle is I get to spend as much time with the people I love as possible and that makes me happy. I promise I am doing my best to balance my time between everyone and that sometimes for my own well being I need to spend more time with certain people over others. All I ask is that the people in my life respect and understand this.