Make Up Your Mind

Big thoughts always seem to happen when I am doing small things. Saying that I have epiphanies is horrendously self-important. They are not epiphanies or revelations or even eureka moments. But it seems that my best bet for wrangling the honest, real thoughts out of my spiderweb head is doing the dishes. Or blow drying my hair. Or, as was the case yesterday, driving myself out of the parking garage after a day at work. In some instant between the subbasement and the basement levels, I finally realized that the life I am looking for--not the vacation life or the pretend city girl life-- might not even exist. And that I feel like I'm running out of time.
The thing is that I want two distinct lives. At the same time, please. I want the one I have been living; filling my passport, refusing to commit to anything more than impermanence, saving money for plane tickets, toting around journals and cameras and making sure my iPod is always charged for those train rides and air hours. Granted, I lived in St. John for almost three years the second time around. That doesn't sound impermanent, does it? But it was, really. Because the entire time I was there, I was not sure how long it would last. I knew it wouldn't last. There was no way to make plans for anything more than about 6 months out. St. John is also the place where I was able to decide to go to Europe and buy that plane ticket within two weeks of said trip. Without planning, without much thought. Just to go. Living that way would have landed me in Oregon about two months from now. To another seaside place, which I would have loved for a while and left eventually.
And then. Then there's this life. Here, I am surrounded by true, good friends whom I have known for so long that everything is comfortable and nothing is new and it is wonderful that way. I went on a "How I Met Your Mother" kick when I lived in the islands, and I remember envying the characters. I was jealous that they got to hang out with each other in a normal life. They had all known each other for most of their adult lives and were past the small talk where you ask where people are from and what they did there and how long they've been doing what they are doing. I have probably had a thousand conversations in the last six years that never went beyond that. Not that I didn't make best friends in the islands. I did. But I have desperately missed the people who know my whole history because they were there for it. We have all loved each other through every phase, every boyfriend and girlfriend, every bump in the road. We have loved watching each other grow and morph. There will not ever be a time in my life when can't I fall into these friends.
In that vein, my family is here. I can see them any time I want to. Holidays and birthdays. If I need to snap out of it or if I need advice or if I just need to give my heart a break, my grandmother is a fifteen minute drive away. My mom and dad are another 45 minutes away. My cousin lives in the room next to me. Where I miss the beaches or my wine drinking tent friends, there are people here to fill those spaces.
I love that at 10:00 last night, I got call from a friend demanding that I meet her at a bar I have never been to, and that I could go. I didn't need a cab. It didn't take thirty pain in the ass minutes to get there. And it's refreshing to know that there is a whole city full of places like that.
There is comfort in deciding to live somewhere, isn't there? You can settle in. You can invest in things and people. The wall that I have spent so many years building can come down now. I do not have to distance myself from anything, knowing that attachment is suffering that everyone (including-or most of all-me) leaves eventually. I even bought a vacuum. Buying a vacuum means that I own something that won't fit in a flat rate box that I can send to my some new home. Weird. I might even date someone with whom there is an actual future and maybe no expiration date. Ok, I won't get ahead of myself. But I could.
So, I like this life. There are things to like about this life.
But what I want is both. When I think about Oregon and the girl who didn't have any intention of staying here more than six months, I get itchy. What if I do settle here? What if I never make to Oregon? What if I can't find anyone who will decide on a whim to go to Greece and stay on stranger's couches? The meter on those days is running out, as the life and friends I am investing in are not necessarily conducive to the kind of adventure and spontaneity that I crave. The older I get and the longer I live a conventional life, the less likely I am to be able to escape that way, or to find other people who feel the same way.
I want something normal. A boy I won't run away from. One I will eventually go grocery shopping with. Kids, probably, at some point. I have never been in a hurry to find "the one" and I think that minivans are dreadful and I don't want a picket fence. But I am almost thirty and not even close. And then, I am almost thirty and haven't traveled as much as I want to. There is more to see and do and there is nothing out there that I am not curious about.

One life is inevitably going to get in the way of another.

I am not the only one with wanderlust like this. So, where is the middle ground? Or do people just give up one dream to live the other one?

I feel like a puppy chasing my tail.

Maybe I could live a double life like those guys in Lifetime movies.