In Which I Digress from My Usual Hilarity...

Friends and lovers and other people who read my blog (all two of you)... deepest apologies for my lack of bloggage in the last week... or two... turns out that moving house/starting classes/developing an addiction to various television series (*cough* trueblood *cough*) is in fact rather counter-productive to producing blog posts. Anyway, after serious deliberation (and by deliberation I mean I thought about it for a few minutes during a particularly uninteresting lecture and maybe a few times right before falling asleep at night), I have decided to include the following post which digresses a bit from my usual hilarity and addresses the more emotional side of the nomadic lifestyle, and more specifically, my specific brand of nomadic lifestyle, which I've just dubbed Compulsive Nomadry (seriously, just dubbed- I made it up as I was typing it). Anyway, it probably won't provide as many laughs as normal, but for anyone who's ever moved continents, or been a military brat, or had feelings, it might ring a bell...

The other night I finally-- FINALLY-- had the good cry that I'd been needing for weeks. Some people dread crying and try to hold it in no matter what and think for some bizarre reason that doing so will somehow make things better. I do not understand those people. For me, it's like I know I need to have a good epic cry every so often in order to feel whole and healthy, and if I haven't had one for a while then I sort of just know I'm in for one at any given time and I might as well embrace it. Not that I cry about nothing, or that these episodes aren't genuinely emotionally taxing; on the contrary, I am usually crying about something (and/or everything) quite meaningful to me, and the effect is incredibly draining. But in its own weird way, it's also renewing and rejuvenating. It's like all this emotion has built up inside of me and is finally being released and making room for new experiences and emotions. It's almost like, "Okay, well clearly that's what I was feeling, and now I've processed it, and let it out, and I can move on."

For what seemed like age before, during, and after my move, I was feeling all these conflicting emotions but I didn't really have time or energy to process any of it. Yes I had little bursts of sad here and there where I'd shed a few tears (or whine to my friends about how I was afraid they weren't going to miss me-- I have some [inordinate] abandonment issues, but whatever), but it wasn't until I was finally in London, trying to create a new life and some semblance of normalcy, that I finally had time to really feel what I needed to feel. I am proud and happy to say that this breakdown slash breakthrough did not occur in a public place as it so often does (restaurants and bars seem to be a favorite locale...), but in fact took place one insomniac night while my body was still trying to adjust to the time difference while also processing the (potentially unhealthy) amount of caffeinated painkillers I had ingested earlier that day. I lay in bed, thinking, not sleeping, and trying to coax my fragile emotions out of their hiding place, and sure enough, eventually, there it was-- first just a little lone tear but soon enough a whole watershed. I finally cried about everything I left behind-- my beautiful friends/family and my beautiful church and the beautiful familiarity of a city I'd lived in for two years (even if it did get so cold in the winter that the sidewalks were permanently frozen over and I wished for a team of sled dogs just to avoid slipping and falling every time I set foot outside), not to mention a culture I (usually, sometimes) understood; and I cried about all the things that this move across the pond symbolized: the fact that I didn't really belong in any particular place, and that I would probably never lead a typical life and probably wouldn't be happy living a typical life; and I cried for all the things I would probably never have-- like a permanent residence and a picket fence out front and stability and what most people would consider normalcy.

Because you see, while other people kept reminding me that my program was only a year long, that I could come back after that, I knew there was no 'going back.' Not that I was forever ruling out the possibility of living back in the US, or even in Boston, but I knew that this move across the ocean was my next step on a path that wouldn't lead me 'back' anywhere. And though this is the life I have chosen for myself (because I promised myself years ago that I would never move again unless it was my decision and something that I wanted), that doesn't keep me from sometimes wishing that I could be happy choosing something a little easier, a little more traditional, a little more settled. But for me, that's what it would be: settling. And so I allow myself to cry, and to be sad that I don't have and might never have a typical life; and to slowly move toward the acknowledgment and acceptance of the fact that I will probably always, in the back or front of my mind, be missing someone or someplace; and then I empty myself out and I make room for the new experiences I am about to have and for all the un-normal things I will
eventually do, and I am at peace with myself and my decisions until the time comes for my next big cry and for the process of renewal and acceptance to begin again.