January 26/13

It was a quiet day at home today, which means naturally that I have time to go and fuck things up by getting all introspective.  Today's fuck-up?  I'm never going to get to experience the life I have always wanted.  *sigh*

From the time I was a young girl with my own "office" (a child-sized table and chair set pushed into the half-closet in the laundry room) and an Oxford world atlas, I had the urge to explore the world.  While my friends were on the path to taking up the conventional life of kids and careers, I was exploring the strange place names of the former Czechoslovakia and voraciously studying the capitals of the world, their populations and density, and where the rivers went...I was a 9-year old who wanted to get out of the Northwest Territories and be where all those far-off places were.  But I wasn't born into the family that explored.  At best, we drove out to the west coast in the summers. 

It wasn't until I was 16 that I finally escaped the continent for a self-financed, short-lived adventure in London and Andalusia.  But by this time I was deep into high school, and those around me had expectations for my future; without ever having openly said it, my dad was determined I would go to university or college, something I didn't find out until years later.  Looking back, those ferocious arguments my mother and I would get into around report card time were sort of foretelling my doom.  I wanted to go into drama and music, but this did not thrill my parents, who wanted me to get a job and have stability and security.  I can't blame them.  It's not the dream of most parents to have a starving actor-child.  But then, it was never my dream to settle down, have kids, buy a house, or work at a desk. 

In the end, school won out.  Don't get me wrong, I'm very proud of what I have accomplished, and I even found out I'm pretty good at school (the unexpected nerd), but as the years have passed, I've given up opportunities to go out and explore the world, and now those opportunities have dwindled to almost nothing.  I'm stuck in a job, in a city, in a mountain of debt, with no chance to get away from the responsibilities I bear.

It's no one's fault, really.  It's just circumstances.

More of the world...

...Wish you were here.