My check-up
Trip Start
May 09, 2005
1
23
53
Trip End
Aug 01, 2005
Dahab,
Egypt
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
I had been at conflict with myself over the past few months as to what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be in life. Part of me wanted to just have this perpetually romantic life of exotic getaways and adventures. The other part wanted normalcy, which for me means a family, a home, the white picket fence. Ok, not really, but you get what I mean. Had I just spent $60k and 2 hellish years in NJ for nothing?! Had I gone to graduate school to honestly change my career path or simply as yet another escape mechanism to avoid reality?
It's funny because some of where I am at this point can be blamed on my damn satellite TV. Having access to America has made me think a whole lot. I watch Good Morning America everyday and there was a special on consolidating student loans, career tips for new graduates, etc. All of these daily segments that I felt were being produced specifically for ME!
I know, and have generally accepted, that I do want the familiarity of my life in the US. I do want my 9-5 job (albeit, I want my whenever CAREER that I am happy to go to each day....this was the point of grad school). I do want to finally buy my own place and be able to go 'home' each night happy (as opposed to depressed and scared to my shit apartment in NJ and even bigger shit roommates). I do want the diversions and the generally fast pace of life in the US that I know so well (as opposed to hours poring over how that cockroach got onto its back in my living room in the first place and whether all goats have horns or just the male ones).
I know that travel and experiencing other ways of life will never cease to be an important part of my own life. Hence, the reason I got my degree in the field that I did, so that I may have the opportunity to continue to travel and live overseas for my career. But now knowing and even accepting that I desire a more stable way of life does not make it all any less scary. I am scared shitless. I fear a return to the drudgery of life that found me, a very reliable person, showing up late to work because I simply could not get out of bed in the morning; having loser boyfriends because I thought that was all I deserved; and spending all of my income on crap 'things' trying to make myself feel better. I wonder, having experienced over the past 3 years that 'other' life that I thought was so much more better and fascinating than the one I had before, will I finally be at peace with myself? Will I finally learn that instead of running from life that I will finally embrace it and know that I have the power to make it into whatever I damn well please?
It's funny because I think I am so sneaky and that I could fool of you as well as myself. But my mom said she heard the hint of boredom in my writing and another friend said he could hear the conflict in my voice....the very conflict that I have just spoken of (although he may be biased as he is a fellow traveler who knows not whether to stay or to go).
Hell yeah, reality bites...it sucks. BUT, it doesn't always have to, now does it? I introduced an Egyptian friend here to a new word: jaded. In speaking with him I realized that this is what I had become. I was jaded in life, in love, in other human beings. And I don't want that. But at the same time, wahumdililuh, that I am not naive and overly vulnerable to be prey to others.
So what I seek to reconcile within myself now is my ability to balance life. I've seen and done bad things....I've seen and done good things. The same goes for the places I've been and the people I have met. I do not want to continue to run from reality...well, what I perceive to be MY reality. I'm learning to not beat myself up over my choices, that they all have not been in vain and each served its purpose (as my good friend Oprah says, nothing happens out of order and for no reason...EVERYTHING happens for a reason and in its proper order).
I'm not, at this juncture, going to put deadlines on myself--which is what I normally do. I do currently have a return ticket to NY, but I won't tell you for when. But I am thinking seriously about how I want to use these lessons and eventually return myself, mentally and physically healthy, to America. One major decision I made is that I will not be going to Palestine at the moment. Originally, I was to go there next week on the 15th to teach English for an undetermined amount of time. But my heart is not in it at the moment and there are other personal reasons (namely finances) that are telling me that now is just not the right time to do it. I do not believe that I am physically or mentally healthy to venture into a war zone at the moment. What will I do instead? Hell if I know. I'm not ready to leave Egypt at this very moment...but I am looking at a variety of options and things will fall into place as they are meant to. I guess you all will just have to wait and see along with me. What I do know, though, is that returns home tend to happen quite quickly and suddenly. I have followed numerous other travelogues of friends and I remember always being like "oh, wow, so that's it? yesterday you were running around and in two days you're going home?" Yes, this is how it works and no one except those who have traveled can understand why.
