Other lives

This has very little, I admit, to do with vet school. Forgive me, I'm just not in a school talking kinda mood.

Also, please forgive any strange wording, I've been hanging out with someone who's first language, hell, who's third language, isn't english. It's doing nasty things to my words.

So, tonight, as often happens, I was walking back from the common room, where I had been watching tv (the bobby jones movie, for those who care). And as also often happens, I looked up at the sky.

If my life were different, I sometimes wonder, and I'd spent time as a kid learning to really draw, putting time into it, rather than half assing art like I do everything else, Might I be able to paint that sky? Or photograph it, or sketch it, or hell, even describe it in a way that you coud see it, beautiful as it is, in your mind?

How would my life be different, I wonder, if I'd had something like that that I followed to distraction, something I was totally devoted to, something I actually *worked* at? How would *I* be different? And why the hell am I so damned introspective?

All this, just from looking up at the sky. Man, what I'd give to be able to reproduce that sky. I would have it on my walls, and embroidered into the ceiling of my room, and into the canopy of my bed, and tattooed onto the inside of my eyelids. It's just dark, and full, and perfectly lit. Hell, it's dark pastells. I could lie out under it for hours, days.

But I'm getting off topic, I think. How the hell do people know what they should *really* be doing? Is it what calls to you emotionally? What calls to your mind? Wanderlust? Bank ballance?

I would love to be an artist, but I'm not. Hell, I can hardly write my own name. Draw? Hah, there'd be rioting in the streets if I were to try that again. My mind tells me to be a vet. I'd be a good vet, I hear, deep in my silly little brain. I can be a vet, my brain tells me. I'd enjoy it. But what about travel, calls that wild part, the one that thinks being the worlds worst starving street artist would be a great life. What about all the things you could do if you didn't have bills? what could you do if you followed every whim? Where could you go? And then my little inner accountant pops up- but how would I pay the bills? I mean, I may be skinny, but I still need food. And I hear housing is nice, and heat, and clothes, even basic ones cost money. And that doesn't even touch on the supplies needed by an itinerant street artist.

I seem to come back to this point often in my crazy ramblings, both with myself, and with all the poor schmucks silly enough to read these several blogs that I stretch my bitching across. When do you give up all the people you *could have* been, all the things you could have *done*, and accept what you *will do*, who you chose to be?

And perhaps more importantly, How do you do it? How do you cut loose the dreamer? the kid that would sit out there with three dark blue crayons and one white one, trying to make the sky look right? The one that'd take off for someplace new, or just away, at 2am, even tho there's class in the morning? How the hell, I guess, do you grow up?

How do you make yourself *want to*?

I know I need to. But I don't want to. I want to be peter pan, only cuter. I want to live still in that place where I can do everything, be everything I ever wanted to. And I want to know why the hell life doesn't work like that. Why I can't be everything I want, and do everything I want. Why I can't have 80 hours in a day, and the actual drive to do the things I dream of. Why I can't be that person who says "I want to be this," and does it.

Oh, I know there's hard work involved in that sort of stuff. I know I'm very not about the hard work. I know I'm very about backing out and not committing. I know that if I have the choice to sit and watch tv or go for a run, I'll take a nap instead. I know that to some degree these things make me who I am. But I want to change them. Well, maybe not enough to actually do it, but I kinda want to change them, and that's gotta count for something, right?

it's just that, well, really, If I go and start doing all the hard work, become that boring person that I need to be, grown up and focused, and (ick, ick) hard working, well, would that still be me? Sometimes, when I'm being particularly stupid, I tell myself that out there somewhere is this, I don't know, perfect person for me (no, really, wait, it gets better (or worse, I suppose)) and they'll find me (or something like that) and we'll recognise each other as perfect for each other, and I'll become that person that actually tries, and does things, because I want this (mythilogical) perfect for me person to be proud of me.

And then I wake up and realise that not only do perfect people not exist, perfect for me people do not exist. And to make it worse, if they did, I'd probably kill them in ten seconds flat. And why the hell should I make myself better for someone else? someone else is more important to me that I am? WTF? I'm far more selfish than that. I should be the most important person I have. The one who's oppinion I care about first. Why the hell should I do something for someone else that I wouldn't do for myself. And do I honestly think I wouldn't try to kill someone eventually who spent all their time telling me what to do? Hell, my fathers lucky he's bigger than me, and he was only trying to get me to do dishes and my homework.

And I mean, how the hell do I know that what I give up everything else for is the right thing? Scary though this thought might be to some of you (ok, c, r, both of you) reading here, at one point, I thought my life would be perfect if I had a husband, 3 or 4 kids, and a couple of dogs. Yes, seriously. And no, it wasn't *that* long ago. And a part of me (a disturbingly large part, oddly enough) wants at least part of that now (I'll give you a hint- one part is old enough to vote, and the other runs around on 4 legs its *whole* life). And it seems like, being here, staying here, where I'm sure as hell not thinking I want to stay when I graduate, means not having that now.

And that might mean not having it later, either. If I were a guy, sure, fine. 32, 33, that's still just starting out for a guy. A guy just getting out of professional school at that age is fine, still a catch, plenty of good years ahead. A chick? Ha. Who the hell wants some 32, 33 year old chick just going after her first real job, with 200k in school loans hanging over her?

So what's the problem? I know me, that's the problem. I'm going to wreck this, and all because, cool tho I pretend it'd be, I don't want to be that lonely wacky aunt. I'm not wild enough to flit madly from one doomed affair to the next. Wish I were, life would be easier. I (mostly) look long term. It's a curse. I don't want to be alone. I don't know who I want to be with. Hell, I don't know who I want to be. But I don't want to do it alone. And I feel, I guess, at some point in my little j mind that if I stay here, I will be alone. Hell, I'm looking at getting into the program here, just so I can transfer into one of the two or three schools back home that takes transfers. Is that sick or what?

And it's not that I'm homesick, so much, anymore. It's more that... I don't want to live here for the rest of my life. It's great and all, really, but... There are places in the world, places that feel right, like home, even if you've never been there before. I thought amsterdam might be one, but I didn't spend enough time there. This is not a home. It doesn't feel right, the food isn't right, the pace is wrong. It's like charleston for me, only worse. It's not that it's a bad place, it's just... wrong, ya know? I mean, and maybe this makes me a snob, or maybe it makes me wrong, but... on long island, everything, even when I'm alone, or whatever, feels right. When I'm wandering NYC, even when I'm totally down, it feels right. It feels like home. Hell, I've never lived in the city, and it still feels right. The neighborhoods are gone (or so they say), the feel of the place has changed, and though I'd give anything for a time machine, to go back to when it was better (and everything was always better "before"), I'd still live there today, and love every minute of it. Parts of northern california I could do it in. I'm sure there's somewhere else, too, but... I haven't been yet.

But... what happens if I'm looking, not for mr. right, or mr. right now, but just mr. now, and mr. right walks in? what if he starts as mr. now, and changes, or I change. How the hell do you deal with that? Because I'm not selfless enough to stay here forever. And I'm not selfish enough to make someone move, just because I'm not happy where I am.

I think I've wandered a bit. I don't want to grow up. I don't want to be a grown up. Grown ups have to make choices about things I don't want to choose. I don't want to know the choice exists. I want to live in that perfect happy child-zone, where everything is perfect, and everything is possible, and you never have to choose. Do I stay single forever, do I become totally singleminded, like I know I have to in order to do this, or do I give up, and change everything, and become something I'm probably not, and just look for someone else to "complete" me? Why the hell can't I just sit under the beautiful, soft, perfect dark night sky, watching the clouds sweep past the stars, with the moon glowing wildly to the side forever?

totally off topic, but... I think being able to just watch the sky, damned near forever, would be the thing that would make life for vampires, if they existed, worth all the crap legend says the'd have to put up with.

j.