Yesterday I asked God to help me be less distracted. And poof goes my DSL light (not right after my prayer, of course. Heaven practise less dramatic sense of timing than most people think). So there, my doubts were confirmed - Facebook hasn’t got divine approval.
Anyway, plenty of things have happened since I last blogged. I shall try to recount them quickly, or slowly, my longwinded-ness being something expected by my loyal readers (yes, I have one or two, as baffling as it sounds. They must really like my blog layout).
First of all, I’m going to the USA. Don’t be duped by the nonchalant full stop. My mind is actually so full of exclamation marks and question marks and, for some reason, parentheses that they reached a bottleneck on their way to my fingers (What to do, my internal motorway is made in Malaysia. Ooo look, a pair of parentheses squeezed its way out via the emergency lane, tsk tsk).
Thankfully, I still have a little less than two months to get used to the idea that I AM LEAVING.
My Au Pair programme will start on early July. I shall have to be prepared to take care of three super adorable but possibly naughty kids, live with a host family and in a country half the globe away, making new friends, adopting a new lifestyle and making my own path.
Most of all, I will be stuffing as much of my life as possible in a suitcase and bid goodbye to those that would not fit.
I would really, really like them to fit, though. But hauling two parents, a hyperactive sister and her dramatic husband, a noisy boyfriend and a bunch of whimsical buddies through the departure gate would just make the customs have a fit. Loading them all onto the bomb-scan-conveyor-belt thingie would be problematic too.
So I suppose I just have to settle on wiping the tears off and sucking it in.
It’s just as well, too, for this is a trip where I test my mettle. When out of my comfort zone, who will I be? How far can I go?
I don’t really know why it is important to find out about this. I don’t even know whether I’d like what I find. But I want to know all the same.
Am I me? Or am I the people around me?
Plus, I’m dying to see the States. Perhaps I really am selfish.
***
I had a nervous breakdown last night.The US trip was suddenly becoming too real. If reality bites, this one nibbles. Slowly. Discreetly. And one day when I look down my right leg is gone.
Reality burps.
As I lay on my bed last night, thoughts filled my head, none of them pretty. The thing about thinking too much in the middle of the night is that monsters come to haunt you. There’s a line about heroes in Pratchett’s Wintersmith, “...someone must go into the Underworld to find the real Summer Lady... and he must do it in fear and terror like a real Hero should, because a lot of the monsters he must overcome are the ones in his head, the ones he brings in with him.”
I’m no hero. But that’s no excuse to act like a wuss.
So I push all the monsters away and fell asleep. It was a fitful night.
Then Bryan called me this morning. “You are at the point of no return,” he pointed out, along with some analogies to do with airplanes and flying too far from base and not having enough petrol to fly back and other aeroplanes already taken your place. He sounded mighty intelligent for 7 am, but too bad my head was still half-buried in my pillow.
When I got a bit more sober, the truth of what he said hit me. I am at the point of no return. Any form of wallowing and self-doubt should have been done months ago, before I hit the application button. Now, it’s a straight road ahead.
And it’s wide open.
So yeah, maybe I’ll never be ready to leave the life I know here. Maybe I’ll never be ready to let go. Maybe I’ll never be ready for the possibility that when I come home, everyone may have moved on with their lives. Maybe I’ll never be ready to take that cross-continental leap.
But maybe I don’t have to be ready too. There must be a reason why faith is often associated with leaps, and not marathons.
