Day 148: STRESS

There's something to be said for being too busy living to blog.

Jeeze louise.

This whole month I had it in my head that I would use my three day weekend at the end of January to catch up on my blog. Instead, I'm four days even more behind than I was at the beginning of the weekend!!! >_<

Not that I'm complaining... exactly... No way in hell I'd trade in these past two weekends for bonus blogging time!!! But since when has my blog felt like a burden rather than a comforting respite!?! Shit.

The funny thing is, though, that it is very clear to me that I haven't taken the time out of my life to write in the past few days. I'm tense, I'm stressed, I'm tightly wound, I'm freaking out... I'm pretty sure I can FEEL my blood pressure getting higher. I stopped to think when the last time I felt this anxious and stressed was, and honestly, I'm not sure. One day on my trip while I was in Amsterdam - but, again, I immediately realized it was directly related with the fact I hadn't been able to blog in five or six days.

Something about taking that hour (or more, or less) each day and just zoning out into my own world of story telling or reflection or what have you, jamming out to my own music, sipping some wine and letting my fingers go crazy on the keyboard does WONDERS for my well being and spirit. The moment I write something down, I magically gain perspective on it - whether it's something utterly amazing that's just happened or something that has been tying my tummy in knots all day long - suddenly, it's all just words on my screen and I can choose to take it or leave it.

I always knew I loved my blog and took great pride in it, but I didn't realize just how a part of me it had become - nor just how imperative to my centering of myself it truly was. Until about an hour ago.

And so I almost screamed to myself, "STOP! JUST STOP! THIS IS NOT YOU! THIS IS RIDICULOUS! EFF ALL OF THIS FOR AN HOUR, GRAB YOUR BOTTLE OF WINE AND OPEN YOUR BLOG UP. NOW!"

You know, for as often as I judge others for not being able to get their shit together, it's times like these that I realize just how tricky it can be to have one's shit truly together! Exactly how many layers do I even have to my crazy awesome Keeping My Shit Together action plan!? I have my blog, I have music, I have my book ("When Everything Changes, Change Everything"), I have the movie "The Secret," I have Pinterest, I have painting, I have dancing, I have writing in a foreign language, I have traveling, I have meditating, I have cupcakes, I have friends, I have Conor. But most other people, who haven't been tirelessly working on building this arsenal for almost a decade... how do they keep their head above water!? In all seriousness.

Of course, I know what set me off tonight.

Abby.

At the beginning of the month she had proposed to me "Big Girl Tuesdays" in which we would come home and work on getting a job after this June. I told her I thought it was brilliant and I, too, started to participate... up until I found out about the offer to stay in Madrid, hardly doing anything 16 hours/4 days per week, and still making considerably more than I'm making now waking up at 8am and getting home around 7pm every day. And then, I thought, why not? Sure, maybe I'd like to hit up a new country, but I'm not sure where I'd find a deal doing that little for that much in a place I already knew I loved! Plus, maybe if I stuck around I could actually get good at Spanish, instead of where I'm at now - which is hardly much better than when I arrived. It sounded like the perfect present to be handed at the end of this silly "Master's" program, and so I was down.

I talked to Abby about it and she seemed to seriously be considering it, herself. Over the past two weeks we'd both brought it up a few times, about how we could live near Malasana and get a cute apartment together and go out to cafes and get side jobs and have a splendid time living in downtown Madrid. About how we'd have more than enough money to travel sometimes and how we could go to the beach! It sounded dreamy and perfect.

Until last night when she told me about her conversation over Skype with her mom this past weekend. Her mom, she'd told me long ago, has always been of the opinion that Abby should come home as soon as she can to start her "real career." Having parents that support me in my "real career" of being a professional World Traveler and, on the side, Travel Writer (tee hee), I couldn't relate. How could anybody's parents see living abroad as impeding their child's "professional" life?! I mean, Abby is two years younger than me, too boot! How offensive! So yeah, I'd known about her mom's feelings - but after she told me about them again and expressed her subtle shock at her mom's bluntness, I started to worry. I have never been the sort to hear my parents' opinions and suddenly take them over my own, but so many people I know are nothing at all like me...

I tried not to think about it for the rest of the night and all day today, but when I came home, Abby's resume was up on her computer. When I asked what she was up to, she said posting her resume on a site back in Massachusetts that hires teachers.

I think that was more or less the last thing we really said to each other tonight. And considering it is almost 11pm, that's saying something. I'm sure she doesn't know I'm bothered by it - I have a long list of things I'm stressed about tonight - but this is definitely at the top of it.

How many times must I be forced to realize that it is a bad - awful, even - idea to try to tie my future destiny to anyone at all. It didn't work with Julia. It didn't work with L. It didn't work with B. It won't work with Abby. And it all makes me feel so clingy - liked there must truly be something wrong with me.

But you know what? EFF THAT. Almost every person I know runs back home as soon as they don't have a clear idea of what's coming home. They run back to their friends and family and they call it having "ties," but really it's because they're just as scared as I am to go it alone. So you know what, no - maybe I'm not like those people that want to run back to Colorado the second I don't know what's next, but I would like to have somebody - just one person - familiar and wonderful near me on my next step as an adult. And I'd like somebody to find me as familiar and wonderful to also want to blindly step into the future with. But gosh darnit, it's just not working.

Don't get me wrong - I can see what a blessing in disguise this clearly can be. In the current case, if I do decide to do the Madrid program next year and Abby isn't here, I'll find a native to move in with and I will drastically improve my Spanish and Spanish culture, thus making staying here an extra year truly beneficial and fantastic. Or, if she doesn't do the program, maybe it will give me a nudge to follow through with one of my other plans and move to Thailand or Japan or Brazil or the Caribbean - or wherever. Either way, it's far from the end of the world.

It's just that it feels so safe and comfortable and happy to think of not having to once again start ALL over. To have somebody on my team next to me, ready for whatever comes next. At first I thought this had to be a girlfriend or boyfriend - then I realized it could be a really good friend - but now I'm realizing I have to be enough on my own... and that just sounds so tedious. The type of adventurous and wonderful life I've signed up for definitely lists this as a prerequisite, I know - I was just hoping... maybe... you know... this time I could bypass it this go around? I know down the road it is more helpful to just burst on the scene and passionately GO FOR IT... but it's just the thought of having to do that that really weighs me down, even though I have empirical proof of how ridiculously awesome it always turns out when I suck it up and do it all by myself.

So I really shouldn't be upset. I shouldn't find it to be a extremely mild sort of betrayal. I shouldn't feel a little lost about it. I know everybody needs to do what's best for them and that no matter who is there or who isn't there, my life will always turn out to be an amazing adventure filled with wonderful people because that's just how I design it and live it to the best of my abilities... but for tonight, I'm just going to let myself feel the way I do. Sometimes I have to tell myself it's okay to feel something other than bubbly,  happy gratitude. It's important to occasionally balance that out with slightly more lugubrious disposition every once in awhile.

When I sat down to type this entry an hour ago I felt like inexplicably disturbing greenish/brownish bubbles of stress and anxiousness were bubbling up inside of me and about to boil over. After having sorted through everything that was subconsciously going on in my mind, I feel more at peace to accept the fact that I consciously elect to feel legubrious for the next hour and a half and feel freed to go about the business I need to attend to before going to bed.

Ahhh... the wonders of blogging. <3 How I missed you, keyboard and blog!

XOXO