“Hmm,” said Rob on the cab ride from the airport to my flat. “It’s…just like Seattle here!” It has felt like it, since he and Anna have arrived, just as it did when my cousin and when Abi were visiting over the last couple of weeks, or even when Mom was here for New Year’s. It turns out that having friends and family come to visit you on the other side of the world is a lot like having them come to visit you on the other side of the country: wherever you all are together is immediately familiar.
As opposed to the last couple of very exciting weekends (which, to be fair, did include at least one whole day of sitting around in yoga pants and drinking tea in a bonhomous fashion) I’ve been feeling pretty lazy this past couple of days, so when Rob and Anna showed up from Sunnyvale and professed their desire to sit around the house and eat my cousin’s cooking and take pictures of me pretending to be a DJ, I was very grateful. Part of me was all “No! You have come to the other side of the globe! You can’t just sit on the couch and eat pizza! We could do that at home! You Must Go Out And Do Things!” and then another part of me was all “Oh, can we get extra olives on that?” and very grateful to just sit and talk, for as long as I wanted, to these two people I’ve known for so long and in so many different contexts.
We have, you’ll be happy to know, left the house on a couple of occasions, our devotion to laying around the house and to eating ginger nuts dipped in tea notwithstanding. There have been lunches at Fidel’s, of course, and walks around our local cricket pitch (“So they just…run back and forth?”) and even a night out on the town that involved quite a few lemon-lime-and-bitters and some guy in a very tight white t-shirt at Boogie Wonderland yelling in my ear and gesticulating towards Rob, whose dance moves were blowing the entire southern hemisphere’s mind: “The GUY with the BEARD is AWESOME!”
The other night as we were sitting on the couch after another viewing of Sione’s Wedding, which is fast becoming my favorite NZ movie ever, Anna asked what I was planning to do next. I told her some more about my half-baked plans to go to Australia and to Southeast Asia. “I haven’t thought about it much for the last couple of weeks,” I confessed. “Everything’s been so busy.”
“Why don’t you just stay here?” she asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit,” I said.
I have. Quite a bit. I can only think about it for about ten minutes at a time, though, as I pretend that it’s not March now and hence I that have only five months to make a decision, or decisions, about what to do and where to go next. Can I get a work visa? Can I get a new job if the one I have now can’t fund me? Can I still do some travel and get dive certified and see some more gorgeousness in New Zealand? What’s the difference between staying a year and staying two years? When I get on my flight back to the States in August of 2008, will I be going for a visit or will I be going back?
Ten minutes: Am I going to lose all my friends and family if I stay for two years? Will anyone remember me when I return, and will it be too much of an effort to reacquaint ourselves? Are there some private jokes I’m just never going to get?
Ten minutes: Why, considering I have essentially recreated my life in Seattle here in Wellington, does it seem I do so much better here than I did there? Why does going to work and going to New World and going to bellydance seem so different?
Ten minutes: Am I still going to get a chance to do some real travel, or am I going to condemn myself to a cube for another year? If I stay, will the rose-colored glasses that I am still wearing, for the most part, fall off? Permanently or temporarily? Can I really live the backpacker lifestyle for any amount of time?
Ten minutes: Why don’t I want to go back? There’s nothing wrong with back. I like back. I had it good there. So why, when I imagine getting on the Metro bus from Ballard, going to see the roller derby, having a chocolate-lavender at Cupcake Royale…why do all those things, which I loved dearly, make me feel a little…deflated…when I think about them now?
“You have changed. You are different,” said Anna that evening, and I didn’t ask how. All I know is that these ten-minute thoughts are adding up, week by week, in between doing the laundry and making tea and thinking about politics and walking to work. Soon I’m going to have to take stock and figure this all out and make some sort of decision, and I’m just so scared that I don’t know what’s right and will always regret what I’ll end up choosing.
Comments
11 responses to “Ten Minutes”
Worry about regretting your choices when you’re miserable. You’re *happy*. You’re happy where you’re at and of course we all remember you and would love to have you in bellydance class and to go to the 80s prom [oh, immediate ache in my gut at the thought of going without you…] but we can wait an extra year or two or even ten if you decide this vagabond lifestyle is right for you. Stay in NZ if you want. Don’t force yourself to go to Aus. or Thailand just because you think you should. You’re not 99 years old–there will be time to travel more if you find that’s what you want to do. No need to leap from flower to flower when you can cozy up in the petals of this one and linger for a while.
What Renee said.
Trust your intuition; it’ll lead you to do what makes you happiest.
Will anyone remember me when I return, and will it be too much of an effort to reacquaint ourselves?
That’s what this blog is for, yes? So we are all still very involved in your life? I daresay it’s harder for you to stay involved in ours — I only write anything every month or so. But, still. Back will still be here, no matter how long you love living in New Zealand. And if you love it, why not stay if you can? If your rose coloured glasses fall off, well, come back then. No need to leave while you’re so happy in it.
Oh, and I just requested that SPL buy Samoan wedding (US title). So I can get a little slice of your Rockstar lifestyle.
Speaking personally, you could be gone ten years and the first time we got back together we’d be elbowing each other about dirty pirate booty, or someting. I bet most of your friendships are like that, only maybe without the pirate part. I think you should do whatever sounds fulfilling and fun, and if that means staying, you should go for it. And if whatever you choose doesn’t feel right, you can always change your mind.
If this is any template for major life decision making, I always try to think of the feelings I might experience if I didn’t do something. Right now, I’m thinking a lot about condominiums. Some that I’ve been looking at, if they got snapped up suddenly by another buyer, I wouldn’t be so sad. Others, I’d be kicking myself for not taking action. Another example, I wasn’t so sure about my relationship with my “pre-husband” back in the day and caused myself to think, What if I were a guest at my now-husband’s wedding (with some other trampstress as his bride!). The sheer horror! I resolved at that thought that I would NOT be a guest at my now husband’s wedding. I would be the bride!! So, where do you want to be the bride, Chiara? And which are the weddings at which you’re okay being a guest, dropping your greeting card in the frou-frou wishing well of cards, having a merry time on the dancefloor, unmoved by thoughts that you may never see a picture of yourself from the whole day?
Hope I didn’t force a metaphor here…Blessings.
Honey, anyone can plainly see that this is the best place for you to be right now. And right now means until August 2007, or 2008, or hell, whenever. I think you need to stay.
But whatever you decide, I’m behind you.
Make a choice and then MAKE it the right choice. Someone told me that once and it’s helped keep things in perspective when I’m facing major decisions. Good Luck!
What everybody else said. Especially Renee and Linda: You seem happier to me, even at this distance, and I don’t think you should worry about what you’re missing by not coming back if you’re happy. And your friends will pick back up with you when you come back or we go there or we meet somewhere else. The more things change, and all that.
I meant to comment on this post a few days ago, but as is often the case I couldn’t find the write words to express what I wanted to say. A lot of the other commenters have gone and said it much better, but I’ll still rehash. :D
You should worry about your own happiness now, not what will happen when you return to the States. I get the sense that you still have a lot of adventures left in the Southern Hemisphere, and I think your friends all understand that and are just.. really happy to see you happy. As someone else said, you could be gone 10 years and we could still jump right back into talking about “that one time we..” and hugging and singing “I Will Survive” together as soon as we saw each other again. I think you should go with your heart, and if your heart is torn between two choices you should go with the path that would be hardest to come back and do later if you regret not taking it.