Being back in Portland, the full weight of my reality hit me. This is my last stop before I leave for Rio. Yesterday, when I was still in Seattle, it was easy not to think about what was coming up. After all, I still had to come back to Portland – first things first, you know? Let me get back to Portland, and then I’ll worry about what comes next. Well…I’m in Portland now. There’s no ignoring it anymore.
I no longer have an actual home – all my stuff is in storage, save my giant suitcase. I’m in the process of selling my car. I have no income, only my savings. I’m leaving the country in 4 days and I don’t know yet when I’ll be back. I don’t really know what my life looks like at all 3 weeks from today. I mean, I have ideas, but no firm plans. When you go on vacation, it’s easy to relax and enjoy yourself because you know you have a home base to go back to. You have a home, a familiar life, and you know when you’re returning to it. I don’t have that. This isn’t vacation for me. This is my life, and it’s not at all familiar.
This is what I wanted. I wanted to be more free, less rigid, more open to come-what-may. I still want this. But, I’m not used to it, this feeling of not knowing what tomorrow brings. I haven’t learned yet how to just be with it, to just wait and see, to just trust that whatever tomorrow brings is exactly what I need. “What’s going to happen?” my mind keeps asking itself. And all it gets in return is “I don’t know.”
I feel anxious – my mind races and my stomach is in knots. I feel confusion – I don’t know what to do next. I feel dread – my limbs feel weak and I feel a strong desire to curl up into a ball, hide, disappear, stop time for a minute while I catch my breath and figure it out.
But, there’s nothing to figure out. This is it. This is all there is. All the time in the world wouldn’t change that. Tomorrow, there will be something new. But, that’s tomorrow, that’s not for me to know today.
The not knowing leaves a sense of emptiness inside, and I feel the draw to the old familiar ways of coping with these feelings. Food is a big one for me. I get caught up in my emotions and feel an overwhelming need to eat, to fill up the hole inside me with food. When this happens, I eat quickly and mindlessly, not even really paying to attention to what I’m eating or that I’m eating, certainly not enjoying the food, until I’m physically full, but the emptiness inside is still there. Another is withdrawing into my mind, where I dwell on negative thoughts, feeding the emotional fire. Another is sloth – laziness, doing nothing. Another is wine. To an extent, another is shopping. I should be glad I have no place to put anything new so I don’t waste the money I have on things I don’t need to fill up holes that can’t be filled with physical things.
There’s nothing for it but to learn to live with the not knowing. Knowing what tomorrow would bring has seldom made me happy in the past; on the contrary, it usually made me miserable because I didn’t like what I knew tomorrow would bring. That’s why I traded in the known for the unknown.
And I’m glad I did it. I’m grateful for everything and everyone that played a role in precipitating this change, and I’m thankful for the resources I have available to me to back this endeavor. But it’s hard, folks. It’s scary to be walking into uncharted territory, able to see only a few feet ahead as I blaze a new trail. I just have so much to learn.
TL;DR: Still learning how to embrace the unknown, still struggling with my fear of it.
What a lovely perspective, Elizabeth. Thank you. And thank you for your support. Your words warm my heart.
You’re incredibly brave, Janet. Yes, of course, this is hard, but choosing it anyway, acknowledging the difficulty, accepting it – I can’t wait to see what else this adventure brings!
Plus, you may not have a physical home to come back to, but you have the people that mean “home” to you that will always welcome you with open arms if you need to abort and come back or even just push pause for a moment and reset yourself.
Bangkok was my home for years, but for the people and the culture more than the place. Very few things I knew are still there, and the people are scattered all over the world now, so then is my home – the world.