where's my heart?

This week was supposed to be my break week...a week where you relax, unwind, and catch up with yourself. Me? Noooooo, i spent time catching up with projects and studying and quizzes...the list is endless.
Thing is, sometimes you get so caught up with all these things that's going on in your life that you forget to stop and look. I'm not talking about smelling the roses or staring at the clouds...but just look. I did, and I didn't like what I saw. All my friends went home to spend time with their families, and I insisted on staying here because of my truckload of work. It's easy, all I had to do was set some days aside and say I'm gonna spend some time with my family, but somehow I came to the conclusion that completing all these mundane tasks would fulfil my "needs". Somewhere along the line I lost track of my priorities. My brother is home for the week and I haven't seen him for the longest time...I want to so badly that my heart is breaking. My parents, I've been here for more than a year and they still call me multiple times a day...which annoys me to no end, and yet when they don't it's a void I find difficult to fill. My sister? Oh god, how I hate her...and yet when I'm not with her is when I miss her smile and the fighting the most.
I suppose my message today is simple, you don't and won't know what you have until you get a glimpse of what life is like once it's gone. I've made up my mind that I'm going to go see them soon, hopefully soon is soon... Although I tell this to myself all the time, today is the first time I've realised just how big a place these 4 people hold in my heart. At first i thought I was just missing my friends, since they're all gone, but it wasn't just that. It's this. Too bad, I come from a family that doesn't really express affection verbally, I can never tell them just how much I love them. I remember this one instance when I first came here, I was so incredibly homesick, that while I was talking to my mother on the phone I was sobbing, but she had no clue. Some might think what's so difficult about admitting that you're homesick? But see, that wasn't the issue. My mother had never been away from me for more than a couple of weeks, and even then I was with relatives. I found out from my father that she had trouble sleeping at night and was constantly worried about me, if I let her in on the fact that I was crying, I know for a fact that that she would cry herself to sleep until the next time she saw me. My dad? He calls me constantly, not to check up on me (he could care less if I'm playing tonsil hockey with some guy, which I'm not...but just to hear my voice) and threatens me to eat, as if that would somehow magically make us closer. I guess that's how Indian parents express love, since my mom does it everytime too. Sometimes I feel like I have an unhealthy bond with my parents, I mean how many of us can say, at this very moment, that out parents would die if that was what it took for us to be happy? I know I'm being melodramatic, but I can.
This is turning out to be a really long post, so where's my heart? It's not with some guy I met or something like that. It's with these 4 insignificant people, and the best part is I know they will never break it. Maybe someday when a guy comes along, he'll be smart enough to ask a small piece from them, and these "gatekeepers" as I call them will be the ones to determine if he can join them and keep guard over my fragile heart as I keep guard over a piece of each of theirs...and his too. :P