All the lives I'm not living

Alternative title: Stay/go, yes/no (I don't know)

Sometimes I am so tired of thinking about all the lives I'm NOT living, all the things I'm not doing. I want to feel like absolutely anything is a possibility.

I used to price apartments in other cities--Paris, Vienna, Barcelona--and try to imagine myself there. (How would I feel waking up with a view of the Eiffel Tower? Would it change the way I buy groceries? Would showering feel any different?) Once someone said to me, "Why do you do that? You're never going to live in those places." It crushed me. Maybe I really won't live in those places. It's not like I speak the language or have any job prospects there. But I want to feel like it's a possibility.

This contrasts with my strong urges to have roots and security--to have people who depend on me and whose day is not complete unless I am in it. There are no people like that and it's a very lonely realization.

My family would be happy if I moved back to WV and married a man who goes deer hunting and drives a big truck and has dirty fingernails and who can talk about things like carburetors and horsepower. We could have children who wear grubby, stained t-shirts and a house that needs a new roof if we could only stop living paycheck to paycheck. My husband would change the oil in our old minivan himself.

Oh my God.

To liberally borrow from a Tom Waits' song I heard for the first time recently, I packed up all my expectations and moved out to California. It turned out that I was better at starting over than I thought I would be. I've never known what I would be doing after June 30, 2008 when my fellowship ends. At first I was so homesick I was sure I would go back to the east coast afterward, but now I'm not so sure. I like San Francisco. But will I ever have anything here? I don't know. Would Portland or Seattle or Philadelphia be any different? I don't know that either.

I guess I've just always wanted to feel like I was somewhere I belonged. I had it for a brief time in Richmond, and I'm not sure how to find it again. ("I know I'm at my house, but I wish that I were at home...")

I do know that I need to get out of the mindset of waiting for my life to begin. It's here. It's now. It's underway.