I’m having a really hard week. Tuesday hasn’t even ended yet, I’m fully aware.
I have moved around (at least) every eight months since January 1997 at age 17. I tend to stay in one spot for four to six months. The shortest time I’ve stayed somewhere after moving there was when I moved to Florida when I was 19. I lasted two weeks. Two months in Luxembourg. Five months in Africa. A few months in one apartment in British Columbia. A few more months at another place in British Columbia. Four months in Mexico. Two months in Mississauga. Eight months in Waterloo. Nova Scotia peppered throughout the past ten years. Here and there, but never staying anywhere.
We’re approaching seven months in the British Virgin Islands, and this week my brain is telling me to LEAVE GODDAMNIT LEAVE. I DON’T CARE WHERE YOU GO, YOU MUST LEAVE. It’s everywhere. I can’t go to work without thinking it. I can’t go to the gym without thinking about it. I can’t cook dinner, go to sleep, design, nothing.
First, this stupid island is stupid. Yes, it’s pretty and the colour of the water is the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen, but BY god, I’m tired of the drivers, the insects, the heat, the dirt, the people, the cost of food, I’m tired of the sun because it doesn’t differentiate the days from yesterday, tomorrow or next week which means that life FLASHES before my eyes and then I’ll be dying at age 80 and going, “waaait a second, wasn’t I just 22? 12? What the HELL just happened?!” This is one of the things that I hate most in life: It goes by way too quickly, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.
This time it’s not about travelling. I just made the long trek back to Canada a month ago. I don’t WANT to travel. I semi-like where we live and I’m semi-happy (usually) with our life here, but this week is just stupid. I don’t have time to go out and meet new people. I work about 70 hours a week (and working is easier than making friends anyway, so that’s one of the reasons I do it so much). I don’t have a life after work because I go to the gym, cook dinner, work, watch a TV show and it’s time for bed. Clive takes the car at least three times a week to go fishing or to Thursday Volleyball Games (aka HELL ON EARTH), and so I’m stuck at home anyway. Not that I mind. Alone time is good.
Basically, I feel really stuck and I don’t like it. It’s hard to get out of a 10 year-old habit that’s as dramatic as picking up and moving your life from one area/country/province to another. We’ve got a lease and a car and I have a job contract. I’m not going to leave this place anytime soon because I’m just not. Maybe that’s what the problem is, too. I know I’m not going to leave, because I can’t leave. I have a fiance who loves it here for many reasons other than it being his birthplace, and for him I will stay. But if I was a free girl again, I’d be out of here faster than you could say “goodbye.”
