Monday night, I found myself plotting and scheming. If I work until my contract ends on July 1, and I raid the fund I reserved for the down payment on my next house, I could climb back into the camper van for the six months still OWED to me by the Universe, and ...
My inner two year-old is pouting big time, but I've had to veto this scheme of hers.
You see, there's a big difference between leaving and running away.
When I left in the camper van last fall, I was taking a break. I'd thought through what I really wanted to do with my time for the next year - and that was to 'do' nothing. I wanted to be; I wanted to rest.
I did all of that for too short a spell - and had a glorious time.
If I left again this next summer, I'd be running from I'm not sure what. From my cancer. From car payments and bills. From responsibility. From getting up to the beep of the alarm each day.
It sounds good on the surface. Really good. Unfortunately, life has shown me that running away doesn't work so well in the long run. My troubles have an uncanny knack for following me if I run; sneaking around from behind and then laying themselves across the path in front of me, so I stumble across them just when I think I've left them in the dust. I have yet to come to peace with an issue by not facing it; by running from whatever lesson life is trying to teach me. For me to resolve my problems and move on, I have to face them.
I hate that part.
I don't want to be grown up and responsible. I want to believe in greener grass and that life on the other side of the mountain is better than life here could ever be. But, I don't. I guess it's part of that elusive gift of wisdom that theoretically comes with growing older. Or, maybe, it's nothing so venerable as wisdom. Maybe, I've just made enough mistakes to know when I'm about to get burned, and have learned to avoid the flames.
Either way, I don't think I'll be throwing all the cards up in the air again -- at least, I won't be doing it next year. Another few years down the road, and I may well be singing a new song...
Sometime the way to live through a difficult time is to know when you will get a break from it. Maybe just having a definite date that you know will be a rest, a vacation, will give you a way to look past. You can lie to yourself too. Tell yourself it's a complete bail. By plotting to leave, you can prepare and look forward to going, and yet you can always talk yourself out of it later.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point. I should probably pull out next year's calendar, and start plotting when exactly it is that I will take that month off...
DeleteI would submit that a good old-fashioned two-week vacation is a classic, well-tested release from accumulated stress. Okay, you may not have months to plan on, anymore. Scope out the possibilities that lie in a shorter period.
ReplyDeleteReading back over the entries from BC (before cancer), It looks to me as if you were taking a series of vacations, all in a row, as you traveled from one place to the next. You still can do that, just with periods of work spaced between them.