It looks like I will be spending the next three months in a foreign land, living out of a suitcase (a backpack, in fact), and scrounging for the best possible deals, scrimping to an absurd extent over the appropriate price for a soda or a package of cookies.
I did this same thing a mere year and a half ago, although in a much more foreign land, and on DStein’s dime instead of my own.
I wonder endlessly whether this is the right choice, as I am wont to do, but once it has set in as a fact rather than a mere possibility, I am hoping that like most of my previous choices, I will never regret making it, even if I do in the end reverse it.
I moved to California after middle school because I had to see what was there for me, and though I moved back, I did not regret my choice to go. The same goes for the decision to go to Columbia, and back to Virginia again– then to Columbia once more, in a way.
This lack of regret stems not from a sentiment of what does not kill me makes me stronger, or there are no wasted moments in life, or you should always follow your heart.
I simply calculate that one has no other reasonable choice than to make the best possible decision at the time, and to move on. If it turns out a decision does not work for you, no harm, no foul (at least one hopes); simply back up and try again. Of course, this does not apply to everything- some choices are ineluctably life changing, and no reverse course can do much about their effects. However, I don’t think this is one of those cases. At least, I certainly hope not!
DStein appears to think that this is the worst decision I have ever made- although he thought that, too, about California, if not Columbia, and I wonder why his concern is so disapproving.
My mother says it is a control issue, but I’d like to think it is merely a case of overgrown fatherly concern, for admittedly an overgrown child. Who does not want to keep their kids from making mistakes, from wasting money, and losing face? But what is life worth living, if not for oneself- not one’s parents, or anyone else.
The most shocking thing to come out of all of this is that I, in fact, care a lot about what he says. Why such concern, I do not yet fully understand. Perhaps it is merely that the stench of his stern disapproval is so fragrant that I cannot merely stop up my nose to ignore it. Yet I think there is more to it than that. Why, though, should I take the advice of someone who has made just as many mistakes as the next, on top of which he knows nothing about the publishing industry?
Still, I cannot fault the man for trying, and caring, although my mother can, she who violently opposes any of his influence, if only to create a vacuum of sufficient space for her own- although she would never, ever admit to this. Don’t listen to him! Do what you want- especially when it’s what I want!
I have always known that I served as a kind of presupposed blank battleground on which my parents, and sister, fought their ideological wars, no longer able (or willing) to meet each other in nobler (but also more violent), man-to-man combat. But I guess I never supposed how much impact these battles had on my own decisions, about my own life, at least about things that had nothing (much) to do with them.
It’s a scary thing to admit how much influence your family has over you, especially when you are so convinced that they are insane (if no more than anyone else), overbearing, and irrevocably confused about the person you really are.
It is a dangerous thing to spend too much time with, or lend your ear too much to, these people who remember your first step, and consequently, hopelessly and haughtily presume to know that therefore they can read your mind from that point on.
No one should be bound to the tantrums they threw at three, the lies they told at five, the insolence they put on a thirteen- yet this is just what a family tries to do. At least my family; I shouldn’t speak for anyone else. As much as we may try to construct new dynamics, I will never be much more than that role I once played (and continue to play), in that messy, organic and disastrous whole. I can never stand fully alone as a person because without them I would not exist at all, even if ironically I cannot fully exist with them around.
My family spends much of their time frustrated by their own, failed attempts to pull me closer, re-enlisting the defector from the chaos of bloody, fraternal wars. What they don’t realize is that I’ve been trying to escape their web of influence for as long as I can remember. Some webs are less harmful than others, but when there are separate, if overlapping, threads spun by three (or more) competing spiders, a fly cannot help but be caught up and lost in the stickiness. The best chance she has is hop off and spin her own web for once. At least then when she gets trapped, in her own messy creation, she has no one to blame but herself.
