I still remember packing up my passport and dropping it off in a mail slot to be renewed. A sick nervous feeling gripped me as the envelope slipped out of my hand and I walked out anxious, tense, with a dread I haven’t been able to shake off since. The fact that there’s no blue booklet in my drawer that I can grab at a moment’s notice to take off to wherever it is that my heart prompts me to go is frightening as f*ck. I feel trapped, anchored in a place, landlocked and incapable of seeking an out for as long as the government does not send me a new passport.
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Of course, you could dismiss my frenzied thoughts as absurd musings of an overactively anxious mind – one of a hopeless dreamer and I’m probably, to a large extent, far too anal retentive to just pack my bags and go but it is nice to know that the option is available. The fact that the blue paged-key to my great escape is safe and within my reach has been a large part of my sanity since college days.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
I have spent a major part of my adulthood planning a life abroad. Most of these plans have taken some shape when my life, back home, is falling down around my ears and I spend an unwarranted amount of time researching courses in a foreign land, looking up job prospects and even calculating the vacations I’d get so I can visit friends and family. I build an entire life in my head even before I have stepped outside of my room for as much as getting some cold water to quench this thirst that’s far from physical.
Now, there’s nothing wrong about being a dreamer dreaming of a better life until this fantasy becomes innately harmful to the life one already has. It is when this fantastical life plan begins to clash with the life that is preventing you from living it out that problems arise. The fact that I have lived out my life in soul-crushing phases where I have straddled jobs with zero security, opted for jobs that wouldn’t allow me to reach a key salary level, been in relationships that gave me nothing save betrayal and found no fixed direction or goal in life hasn’t helped at all. Yes, I’m now firmly ensconced in a position where I have, at the least, the personal component of my life set. I am in love with an incredible woman, the love of my life, and I couldn’t have been happier. But each time that I think of settling into adulthood with her, I cannot help but panic.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
It is my dream of living a life in a foreign land, earning an international degree that bolsters my career prospects and leading a fulfilling work life abroad that has kept me going through most of my adult years. Now that some pieces of my otherwise jumbled life are falling in place, I cannot help but wonder if these pieces shall ever come to co-exist with my dream. The woman I love will not shift base. Not because she wouldn’t, but because she can’t. She has a life here that I cannot find in my heart to get her to uproot just because I have a dream I am not even fully confident about. It is, at best, an escape route from the otherwise dismal realities of my life, except for her. So, every time I find a course I can get into, a home I can rent, a path I can set off on to make this dream a reality, I panic. One half of me tries to talk me into it and I am almost convinced, enticed by a dream that has remained in my eyes since forever. The other half, though, reminds me of the only thing that has kept me going these years- love. And I’m unable to shake off the panic, my heart beginning to pound and my body recoiling into what could easily be a full-blown anxiety attack. The battle between these two sides gets pretty intense.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
On one end is the possibility of me getting my foot into a door that I do not know anything about except for the fact that my voyeuristic mind and my curious heart craves whatever lies on the other side. On the other end, however, is a fast narrowing world where the door to my impossible (and to an extent, unrealistic) dream is fast slamming shut, locking me into the life I have now. A life that has love but not much else. Amidst the warring, I find myself unable to commit to either side. The deadlock keeps me from making a choice- difficult as it is- a choice, which if broadly categorized, translates into career vs. love.
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How do I pick? Having known pain all life long, the unadulterated joy of finding true love is incomparable to other tangible gains in the world. And yet, ambitious as I am, I am driven by my insatiable desire to make something of myself, my life and the world around me. I want to be able to contribute to the world in a way that can never be erased from history. My love believes I can and I believe her. But what does that even mean? Can I leave her behind? Can I choose between my life here and a life that I have fantasized about? I do NOT know.
It’s an oppressive claustrophobia in which I am constantly making excuses to skip committing to either choice. I cannot bring myself to let that door close nor can I afford to leave the only person who gets me, more than I do. Yet, in taking minuscule steps toward realizing my dream, like getting my passport renewed, I realize I might well be on my way to making a choice. Maybe not.
Image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
Maybe it’s just that with my new passport firmly clasped in my grip, I can continue to dream on in my security blanket and spend my nights cozying up with the woman who can make me see reasonable direction in life.
Featured image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
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