Should I stay or should I go, I don't know?

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Well, I am located in the abyss of despair that comes from wanting to be at two places at once. I have so many reasons to stay. I have so many reasons to go. Should I stay, should I go? Darned if I know!

Anyway, I am going to school in Huntsville AL. There is this thing called Redstone Arsenal, and this thing called Cummings Research Park, and the place where they assemble NASA space vehicles (Marshall Space Flight Center) right next door to the university, which makes this a fantastic school to go to research wise. However, I have the distinct problem of not driving, in a city that is spread out to where nothing is walking distance, except Taco Bell and Bojangles, of course. So, I have to rely on the kind services of strangers and friends to drive me wherever I go. But, I live a mile from where the building I go to school in, so this is very difficult for me, especially with the weather being 100 degrees and humid or 30 degrees, and well, humid! Not fun to walk in at all!! I have so much opportunity here, I can even live across from my building next semester if I want to, but I have the problem of a mother who is begging me to come home. She even has the shoulder injury that has to be operated on and will need some form of assistance for a while.

So, I also could move back home. And yes, that would not be such a terrible thing. I have a lot on my transcript I need to clean up, some bad grades in both grad and undergrad that need to be taken over again unless I want to stick it out here. Not terribly bad grades, just grades that when sorted into my very large assortment of B's makes the GPA look bad. Anyway, I do have a problem with leaving... and a reason to run away.

First, I've seriously fallen for a young woman who is in the same department as me. She is taking solid state physics, I'm taking astrophysics. It is as if everything that she is, I am too, just different, slightly different. But she's a little older than me, I swear must be on the spectrum (as must be half the inhabitants of this city!!) and she still lives at home with her parents. But the main thing here is I doubt many things would keep us apart, but I also doubt that she is going to up and leave Huntsville to come after me, aside from some disaster.

Enter my fears... Part of the reason why I am contemplating leaving is the following. I am worried, and I have been worried for a couple of years, that we're headed for WWIII with Russia and China, or at the very least Russia. I'm seriously worried about what course all the nations of this earth are headed down, this has been a worry for the past few years, and I am worried that there won't be much of an Earth left after this war. I understand that both sides have missile defense capabilities the public is hardly aware of. But war can take its toll on such defenses. Even if that toll is a decrease of 1% effectiveness, and only 50 warheads get through, that's 50 targets, 50 places, perhaps less if they decide to target multiple warheads per target (I suspect this would be the case for higher ranked targets), that's the end of the world as we well know it.

And I wouldn't want to be in any prime target for either side if that happened, or if war seemed near. Huntsville AL was #4 on the target list during the Cold War, and I don't want to be anywhere near this city during any war with Russia.

Of course, this is because I have probably become so stressed out that I convinced myself that war will come in the next 3 months, and the inevitable end of that war within 6 months.

Exit my fears...

I have every reason to want to stay, but some delusional reason and perhaps some backwards call of duty to serve my mother beckoning me home. I don't know what to do. It depends on the day and the situation what I feel like, how this sounds. If I'm having a bad day, then I will want to go home. If I am having a good day, I will want to push on here. I just don't get it. I am conflicted. Something has to change. I have to make this decision soon. I have to come to a conclusion on this soon.

Skywatcher
-Nobody can see past a decision they don't understand. The Oracle (The Matrix Reloaded)

Frankly (with my sometime anti-nuclear protestor hat on), I'd be more worried about one nuclear bomb in a truck than Russian missiles (although my estimate of anti-missile effectiveness would be much, much lower than yours, unless they've gotten those natty new FIRESTRIKE lasers seriously tooled up, pointing at the sky and aren't telling us; antimissile interceptors are still pretty rubbish AFAIK, but a hundred gimballed death-rays might work). That'd crash the global economy and plunge us into the unknown faster than you can say "sub-prime lending." The Chinese have problems of their own and while the Russians are indeed attempting to rearm - probably funded on the profits from selling gas to Europe, which may not last all that long - it's not like there are any major flashpoints looming between them and the US.

Um, sorry, that may not help much and you're free to disagree of course! But this might be more practical: your secret flame: ask her.