Some of the girls in my office are playing, for some reason I have not yet fully understood, “I’ll Be There For You” by Bon Jovi. As in “I’ll be there for you , these five words I swear to you, when you breathe, I want to be the air for you, I’ll be THERE for you…” Kill me. It’s weird, they’re only five or six years younger than me but it’s enough for me to associate this song with sixth grade (1986-1987 school year, Mrs. Yehle), a time during which I was reasonably sentient, and it’s enough for them to recall it mostly from Behind The Music or whatever. I know that in ten or so years the difference between thirty-eight and thirty-two won’t be that big a deal, but right now it still feels pretty huge. All day with the radio it’s been “I was between five and seven when ‘Take My Breath Away’ came out” and inside my head I’m all “But that was the big song when I went away with Ashley and Marah to Camp Kahdalea and we were in the cool rock star cabin with a radio! That and ‘Words Get In The Way’ and “Sledgehammer!’ Gah!”
Also, for no reason at all, I would like to share that when I saw Top Gun for the first time, during the big sex scene I turned to Marah and went “I’m never doing that EVER.” I think I may have also turned to her that same year during Pretty In Pink and said “I want my prom dress to look just like that.”
But whatever. Let me tell you all about this great idea I have: I’m thinking of going to Europe for a couple of weeks. In May, maybe. This is already a pretty great idea for a couple of reasons: I have never been to France, yet I took many years of French and was, at one point, decently proficient. I am at a place job-and-money-wise where I could potentially take a couple of weeks off and not have it be a completely financially devastating experience, although I would, of course, be traveling as cheaply as I could. I fear this will mean hostels. Also, I went to Italy six years ago (with the abovementioned Marah, coincidentally) and liked it quite a bit. I understand that that’s a fairly common reaction to Italy: “Yes, liked it quite a bit!” That was my reaction too, and I would look forward to liking Italy quite a bit even more, if that makes sense at all.
The thing that makes this idea potentially even greater is that in all likelihood I will be doing it alone. Can you believe it? I mean, I think I will be. This is, of course, terrifying, which is probably a good sign that I need to go ahead and do it. Get the tickets and figure out where to go and then just go. Alone. That’s me, Chiara, World Alone Traveller All By Herself. Will I be robbed? Will I be forced to lie about my cardiovascular health? Will I be lonely? Will I bring some knitting to do on trains? What will happen?
A month or so ago I revisited the idea of moving to London temporarily to work as a social worker through a glorified temp agency. I had been seriously considering doing this right around the time I got my job. Back then I was feeling very poor and feeling really sick of constantly being in transition so I shelved the London thing in favor of steady work and health insurance. That’s just how I am. I couldn’t do anything very exciting while I was unemployed because I spent all my time looking for work, and when I finally did get work I couldn’t do anything very exciting because I had to work. And I was really fine with that and I decided I could wait a year to move to London or whatever and that would be fine. And so I’ve spent the past year or so rebuilding my savings account and enjoying dental insurance and mundane but satisfying things like that. Nothing wrong with it. Lots of good things about that.
Recently, though, I’ve been feeling a little itchy. I’m feeling pretty stable in general, and so I started thinking about shaking it up a little. Maybe I should try to get into that London thing again, right? Six months in the UK might be just the thing to help a girl feel like she wasn’t wasting her youth, that she could be adventuresome and exciting even if the most exciting thing she does on a daily basis is sleep with only three blankets in her freezing cold apartment instead of four. So I duly made my inquiries and discovered…that I’m too old.
You have to do this program before your 28th birthday. My twenty-eighth birthday was ten months ago. I’m actually too old to do something, which turns out to be a first for me. I’m not very fond of the sensation. I have a feeling that I’m not where I want to be at this point in my life anyway, you know? This doesn’t help.
So in my own little way I’m trying to do something more exciting. I’ve decided that what I want to do is travel more in general as opposed to just go work in another country (for now), and I’m thinking about doing some volunteer travel in the future as well as saving up for a giant round-the-world trip in four or five years. I’m hoping this little trip to 2 G-7 countries for less than two weeks can help me ease into something bigger and more exciting and adventuresome. January, for some reason, has been pretty unhappy for me and for almost everyone I know, and it’s made me think more about sucking the marrow out of life and seizing the day and a whole lot of other stuff from Dead Poets Society, which I bet you thought I wasn’t even going to mention and that there would be no way for me to get this entry back to where it started, didn’t you. I’m thinking very hard about the kind of life I want to have and suddenly the idea of this little solo trip seems to be a way to get it.