One of the great things about being a geek is the capability of having technology with you on the go. However if I was more of a geek, I’d be sitting here on wireless dialup account instead of, well, not.
The Grand Rapids International airport (GRR) is strange in many ways. First off, the security measures here surpass those of even Dulles (IAD) in Washington. My brother had said to me when he was flying out of GRR to IAD to come visit me last summer about the trials and tribulations he had to go through with security when he was waiting for his flight. I didn’t believe him. How could I? For a metro area of several hundred thousand people, many don’t seem to leave, and it would seem difficult to comprehend the idea that the security at GRR would surpass that of IAD.
I feel more and more out of place when I talk about my travels when in my own mind, I do not do more than go where I want. In my own eyes, the world is so large and I’ve seen so little, it’s hard to distinguish from what is “well traveled” to what is not. I guess it does sound a bit exotic to say I’ve lived in San Francisco, Washington DC, and Toronto and then come back here to good old GRap as the locals call it. Why would I want to come back?
There was a girl I had worked with at the cawfee shop who had said that her world consisted of Kent County and that was it. She had no desire to travel beyond her “bubble” as she called it. She wanted to get married, have babies, and be a mommy. She was all of 18. She had no desire to see the world or explore outside of her bubble. There are those I know who have traveled outside their boundaries physically and could not comprehend what they saw. I mean that here they are, traveling around the state, country or internationally, and disliked it.
Personally, I don’t know what it is. Is it the restlessness that I feel? Which I automatically think that is really screaming of my own lack of commitment. Can I feel comfortable to one day settle down in one place and be happy or even just content? It is difficult for me to say. The Geography of Michigan class that I’m taking currently shows just how diverse Michigan is, at least from a geographical point of view. There is so much to see and do here (as shocking as that may be when taking into heart my thoughts on Michigan and the Midwest in general), that I feel overwhelmed. I haven’t even been any farther than Traverse City and have yet been to the Upper Peninsula, and for being a “local,” to me that is disgraceful.
Because my trip plans for Europe have fallen through, I had been thinking of renting a cottage up in the UP for a week. Just me. The dogs. My laptop and pray-fully, no internet connection. I have found that the more I live alone, the more I like it. I’m more of private person and now I wonder if I will ever really be happy being with someone in a relationship. I think about that part quite a bit, that my own happiness is coming from within, but yet even at that stage, I would never feel comfortable being with someone else. Things like having a family do equate into this, but I do not ever really see someone else as being by side. I’ve honestly thought that if I was not married or in a committed relationship by the time, I was 35, I would end up having IVF kids. Keth and I joke about that now, but the more I look at it, the more I realize just how much of the truth it may be. I’m not scared of this idea, I guess I’ve always thought that it would be better to raise a child alone than in a relationship where it was abusive, and the issue is that it’s becoming clear with my own relationship choices that abuse is all I know. That is not to say that all the relationships I’ve been were abusive, but it all goes back to Alan and when I had for a brief moment in time the “perfect” relationship in my eyes only to have it blown up in my face – all because he had cheated on me.
Danny says I carry extra guilt left over from my Catholic upbringing, and I’m not quite sure that is true. I can see why he would think that but I’m tired of feeling like I have these rigid set of morals and ideas only to find the world shifts too much into the grey pattern area. Most of it conflicting. Like I do consider emotional cheating to be cheating. I cannot abide by the fact that if you are in a relationship that you would have the audacity of wanting to be with someone else. Oh, I know it’s human relations to look and admire attractive people, that’s fine, but when it becomes something else and ends up being more than a fantasy, then it becomes dangerous. Why get married or be with someone if you don’t, truthfully, want to be with them? That’s never made sense to me and those who know me the best would know the agony I went through prior the separation with Paul. It made me numb. I felt nothing other than I did not want to be here and I had to leave and I could never communicate to those just how difficult it was TO leave. The one thing I did resent was the common ideology that if you are not happy, then just leave, that I could pick up and go and no one seemed to take into account that they only knew my side of the story or even better, they knew only what I would tell them. They did not walk in my shoes and they did not seem to understand when I tried to make the situation clear.
I have this sinking suspicion I’ll always be a solitary person, and that discovery has hurt more than anything else. Not that being solitary is bad, but simply that not having someone by my side would hurt. I’ve dreamed of being with someone, this ‘being’ if you will, that would compliment me as I would compliment them. True wuv. So now, I wonder if I feel disillusioned simply because of past experiences or what the deal is. Hope is there, it’s a small flame, and it’s becoming smaller. In the end, I’m tired of a society that is cruel and malicious and I just wish people were nicer to each other, but that wish doesn’t seem to want to work out.
Keth says, maybe I’m looking too hard? She said to me when I was lamenting about this to her fairly recently and I can see why she would say that. If you’ve searched for “something” for over 30 years, it’s very easy to get discouraged but it’s difficult to keep up hope. It’s difficult to feel that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I know there are many difficulties that I have sustained in my life that have bucked the system. I’ve left high school and went back and got my GED. I went to college, only to leave and come back many years later. Things that professionals say are the hardest to do, I’ve done. Yet I feel no satisfaction from these accomplishments.
($Deity save me from ignorant people. Please. A girl in my Geography of Michigan class asked if we had to know the bedrock type. Hello. Geography. Pay ATTENTION! Another woman compared the term ‘outwash’ (the left over silt from glacier movement) to the leftover drippings of Guinness. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.)