I'm still preparing....there's a lot I didn't acount for.

3/25/11

Ahh blogs.  I can’t figure out what that word means and please don’t tell me.  Google has really gone in-depth on the importance of regular blogging, and I’m tired of googling how to journal about my life.  Technological ignorance will always be bliss for me.  Once I get past the fear that there is “internet” lingering around me, I will feel confident enough to learn about things like networks and wi-fi and Twitter.  Blogging is about as far as I will go for now, sans text messaging, which I love.  Hopefully I can put pictures up one day.  This trip so far has been everything from a road trip, to a radiation-filled pipe dream, to a road trip in New Zealand, to drinking on the beaches in Fiji, to canceling and refunding all our tickets (the chance to buy a ticket anywhere in the world would make hearts turn purple with excitement), and now to teaching in Thailand for a year.  Gasp.  I have done the research, I have Google-imaged everything that has popped into my head about South-East Asia and from there decided that the only real things I want to see are rice paddies in Bali and tea plantations in Malaysia.  Those images are inspirations in and of themselves.  To nicely complement the heavenly pictures, I have had the fear of God barrel down on me in the form of my parents and henceforth spent a significant amount of time pale-faced and panicked at work researching the white slave trade, the Thai Mafia, and how much radiation it would take until….various weird things happen (real gems of advice, Mom and Dad, thank you ;)).  Regardless, I feel prepared and significantly indignant at the culture in which I currently reside through forced viewings of Fox News at the gym and my inability to go outside because of the rain to want to leave here and pick up somewhere else.  I finally think I feel ready.

Parts of it I will miss, and you know who you are.  I won’t go into yet because being in Thailand in a classroom full of six year old cuties won’t hit me until about two weeks into it and that’s when I’ll know.  Right now, I still feel that empty feeling.  If I were to look inside of me, there it would be, a little girl in a pink dress sleeping on the ground with my baby blue blanket on a yellow Tuesday.  I don’t know why my mind twists and turns like that, but I feel that small in these preparations.  For the past year and a half I have looked so inward to all this pain and discomfort, I have spoken out and gotten squashed, I have yelled and gotten my vocal chords sung out of me like Ariel from the proverbial Ursula.  My poor unfortunate soul is tired of feeling this way.  I got tired of it.  Tired of the dark colors, of the routinely brown and green meals, of the black and purple work attire, of the same temperature and interaction every day.  Tired of hearing about women’s journeys over the phone as I sucked in their broken hearts, fixed it, and gave them my whole one in return.  I always did this, this past year, I always did this.  I would be like, “Hey, you look broken.  I’ve been broken before.  I’ve fixed myself and although I’m not whole, I can bear the pain because I’ve carried the load for years.  Let me take your broken heart and put it in my chest and I will have your burden”.  I can’t do that anymore, so I back all the hearts faster than a Vegas Blackjack dealer and booked a plane ticket on the path to self-discovery.  And, despite how ready I feel, I am totally freaking out.

Later that afternoon...

I watched a tree cry, colors melting together through my steamy window looking like my warm little hands after I would hold a bunch of Skittles, and wondered how I wandered so far from that place, where words would fall from my mouth like delicious morsels, where I would write novels in bathtubs like King BidGood, where love was so painful it would wash me away in a self-inflicted puddle and happiness was a faraway storm cloud.  How could this creativity, this mass of neons and blurs of pastels, of Saturdays and fluorescent lights and circle beams have escaped me?  And then I feel worn down into a little nub.  Plain and simple.  It didn’t escape me, it was worked out of me. The colors have left me bland and smiling.  No more dark pit, no more addicted love I am cured of that.  I have normalcy and I dislike it, it stings my eyes like the dust from the back of pick-up trucks, causing my fear of cars going in reverse.  Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez I want to live in a dark and sweaty haze.  I can’t wait for that amorous gaze, those curtains in the wind overlooking sail boat toys in the water, strolls through cemeteries with black umbrellas wavering in the heat, houses full of boxes and boxes waiting to be unpacked and examined… here I come to a land without my language.  Now I’m getting it, now I’m excited!