I have spent the last 8 or so years of my life as a nomad. 4 or 5 months in a place max. Usually less. It has helped me run from my problems. When you run long enough, they seem like they don’t exist anymore. You can’t be sure they do exist anymore. Sometimes I really feel like they have lessened significantly. But I don’t think they have. Not really.
Running is easy. People think my life is complicated and challenging and scary but it’s not. It’s easy when I think how it used to be. I was so sad all the time. Sometimes it’s hard to remember because we tend to fog those areas over. I can remember coming home, putting on the shower, getting in, and sooner than later, I would be in a ball on the tub floor. Crying. I wasn’t always sure I knew why. In fact, most of the time I wasn’t sure why. I had a different apartment. It was very small, but I liked the floor. It was situated well. It had an older nice beige area rug that was softer than it looked. I would lay on it, starfished out. I would look up at the ceiling and wonder why I felt like this. I remember having to tilt my head side to side every few minutes to give the tears somewhere to run. Our eyes are little pools. They fill up. It’s so odd when you think about how all these rules of life and the universe still apply in times we think they should be exempt.
The hot water ran out after a while in the shower and I had to stand up and shut it off and towel off. Then I had to make my way to the couch or bed because I was cold and shiver for a bit before I was warm enough to continue contemplating my sadness. Laying on that floor I remember how it became harder and harder to see, then hard to blink, and finally uncomfortable as the tears made a puddle over my eyes. I tilted my head over to the left to let them run. The first time I went just far enough so my tears from my right eye followed my nose down to my nostril and slipped inside making me cough and sputter. After that I knew the technique and bitterly smiled at myself whenever I used it, knowing I didn’t have to interrupt amateur hour depression with a minor choking fit.
I can remember going through the slow painful details of a breakup a few years ago and realizing part way through that I had to pee. But you don’t do that. You can’t break scene for that. But I did and while I was in there I heard her get up and move around and when I came back she was stretching. Sitting there breaking up with someone is static tough work. Need to limber up. Then you can continue.
Sometimes the fear of the reality of things keeps me away from them. I am not afraid to travel the world alone. I sleep in scary places, deal with scary people. Run out of money or get stranded in unknown to me cities. Slept in a walled lot where an old house had been demolished once. Walls had that broken glass cemented in the top to keep people like me out and an old gate with barbed wire on top. Had to scramble to escape early in the morning when the neighbors dog smelt me and barked up a storm. Don’t want to end up on one of those locked up in a foreign jail shows. Dignitaries don’t come to your aid when you’re a vagrant.
A friend who I’ve known for 3 or 4 years now has expressed interest in me in certain ways. She’s way out of my league in almost every way. Also almost a decade younger. Many of my friends saw it coming. I didn’t. Couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to in a way. It would most likely ruin everything else we had. She finally came out with it strongly the other night by phone and for 24 hours it was madness. Then she balked, pulled it back, and straightened out. It wasn’t even anything I really wanted past the physicality of it and the temporary suspension of loneliness that comes along with it. The feeling someone wanted me. The physical warmth of another and the non physical warmth of eyes smiling at you.
The pull back threw me off. And it has been sitting heavily since. If it had happened, I would have had fun, and enjoyed it at the time. Even looked back fondly afterwards. But I would have felt the emptiness that it was supposed to fill even more. It’s like looking at the entrance to a cave. It’s dark in there. You know it’s dark and vast and full of emptiness. But you don’t know, can’t know, how big or dark. Having someone, even for a moment, shines a light. Now you have to look inside and see how big it is. And probably not all of it, but just beginning is enough. I’ve spent a long time with my back to the cave looking out at the forest. I tell myself it’s good that at least I am looking elsewhere and not just at my toes, or with my eyes closed, but the fact remains that I am not shining the light in there. Not trying to solve any problems in there or even see where/what they are. I never forgot this.
She didn’t do anything wrong. What more am I to expect from a pretty, well educated, slightly unstable, rich girl? She vacillated and I knew to expect that from the start. But it reminded me. And I haven’t been reminded in sometime.
It sucks out there, and I’m pretty sure I don’t have what it takes to face it.
Looking at plane tickets to Indonesia now. It’s pretty affordable.
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