I'm getting old.
Don't guffaw. By "old" I mean "grown up." I mean things are happening and responsibilities are forming and shit's getting real. I wrote a very panicked email to my friend Whitney last week about all the creepy things I lie awake at night and think about:
-money
-career vs job
-(absence of) life partner
-my child-bearing properties
-direction
She was good enough to respond with kindness, patience, and a major reality check, (kudos to her degree in social work,) but if I'm honest, I'm still worrying and it's only going to get worse. What brought on the double strength fret-fest? I had a strange experience a few months ago that has somehow repeated itself twice since. My friend Sarah and I were on one of our marathon catch-up phone calls we have every few months, and I mentioned that I had insane plans to go to Thailand and India this Spring. Without a moment's hesitation, Sarah asked, "to live or visit?" I started laughing. Did she really think I would move to one of those places? Me in South Asia? Me, the chocolate-loving, baguette-gorging, cobblestone-trotting Europhile? It seems like an impossible fit. Think of my already frizzy hair and my intolerance for spicy food. Think of my aversion to the heat.
I didn't ask her why that would even be a question, but it stuck with me. It stuck even more when two other friends, both of whom have known me for many, many years, asked me exactly the same question when I gave them the news. I hung up the phone each time wondering how I could be that person in other people's eyes - the girl who picks up and moves to far flung places out of the blue. The girl without roots holding her gently to the ground. An adventurer. A wanderer. A vagrant. I tried not to be offended by that idea. If I look objectively at the last five and a half years since I graduated college, I have done a lot of things that could seem strange / wild / foreign / unnecessarily exciting to most. Perhaps if you aren't living in my head, my choices and life decisions might appear erratic, random, or spontaneous. (Note: I am not a spontaneous person. It is known.) But they aren't, really. I promise I'm neither that cool nor that laid-back.
This idea of itinerant vagary and the calendar have really come together in the worst of ways for my sense of self-acceptance. My ten year high school reunion is fast approaching, and by the time that hellmouth opens, two of my closest friends will be married. I can picture it. Vividly. Half the class will be sporting diamond rings, law degrees, and huge bank accounts. There might be a few babies. I will be the one in the corner trying to down the vodka while telling people that I've spent the last ten years teaching English to apathetic students, making paper products, and promising myself that it's all been worth it and I don't need a boyfriend because they're the anti-passport. I also don't need a 401K or a graduate degree because I have more precious things - like my mind, and my creativity, and a really good head of hair.
It hasn't even happened and I'm already cringing. I can almost taste the vodka coming back up.
Of course, this is admittedly my neurotic, bloated, critical ego picking on its favorite subject. I look at the last ten years and don't regret a single thing. Not even the weird and silly shit I've done in the name of love/lust. (That night we stalked Pierre-Olivier, anyone?) I'm nervous as hell about the aforementioned voyage to Asia, but I also know that it's going to be an experience of a lifetime. It's going to change me. And I'm excited about that. I need the change. It is going to set me back several months of saving from a job that pays pittance, therefore hindering my possibilities of moving away from home right quick upon my return, but that's a compromise. And though I no longer believe in some greater sense of cosmic unity or karmic justice, I do believe in possibilities. Maybe I had my heart trampled into worm food last year because I'm going to meet a 30 year old, vegetarian, erudite National Geographic writer dude in Varanasi (who will offer me a job, because I'm sure he's gay) - or maybe I'm going to see people being cremated on the Ganges and decide to become a nun. Maybe I'm spending the months of January and February making my friend's wedding invitations (which, to be honest, is both a true pleasure and a minor punishment since I masochistically wonder what mine would have looked like when Aydın and I tied the knot for his green card,) because one of their guests will hire me to work at their printing press. Or... maybe not. All I know is that my life is moving forward. Slowly, weirdly, and surely. I'm even getting better at yoga - I know because my instructor now says "that looks good, Anya" more often than she picks me off the floor after I tip over. Small victories, right?
Here's what organized chaos looks like:
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