Love. Sweet joyous love. Shine down your comfort and bliss.
Ehem! ....OOooooOOoohhHHhh LOVE? Tender abyss, eternal desire, great giver of romance and passion, I said shine down your comfort and bliss.
LOVE! love? grrrrr. Hmph.
Fine. Don't.
OH Please! please please please PLEASE!
...Really? no? REALLY NO??? I don't like that answer and I don't like you or your stingy attitude!
tick. tock. tick. tock. tick. tock.
You know this is going ok, in fact I like this whole 'single life.' Just me and my world. Me, my world, my plans, and MY future. A girl could really get use to this. Yeah, I can get use to this. YAY! GIRL POWER!
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Ummm...I'm sorry, who's there? What? LOVE???
....you have got to be shitting me....
And so began my slow sweet unintended and highly resisted romance. It was the summer, what could be so harmful about a summer fling? No, let me rephrase that, it was a summer love. But what could be so harmful about one summer spent with flowers, dinner dates, midnight make-out-a-thons and love? Just so long as I kept to the warzone journalism tactics everything would work out. Get in, Get the story, GET ON THE PLANE!
But oh love, you sly devil you, you filled my heart and took my wits for ransom. One summer led to a year of what to some could appear simply to be the failure of two people to maintain trust, love and commitment, but to me it was an epic lived experience of losing home...and maybe permanently.
I was never the little girl that dreamt of my perfect wedding dress or the dream home my future family would live in. I dreamt of traveling to far off places, giving speeches in front of thousands and changing the world for the better. Who knows, maybe I'd shave my head and live in a Buddhist monastery for a while. Maybe I'd give up all my worldly possessions and live like the poor until we could all prosper together, like Gandhi did. My young bright-eyed possibilities were endless.
Then who know what it really was, maybe my maternal instinct started to kick in or maybe it was just the sad realization that I had never equated being loved as something in my dreams, but something began to change in me.
And so I spent a long confused year in Mexico. Maybe it was the perfect place to be confused in as the general foreign population didn't seem to know what they believed in, besides tequila and cheap beer of course. Slowly I came to realize that whether or not I could be with this one person for the rest of my life was not really the issue. The problem was the sudden and yet gradually more profound discovery that I wanted things that didn't fit into MY PLAN. I still wanted to be free, to live my dreams, to travel the world, to dance under the stars, chat in foreign languages and to, as they say, fight the good fight. But now I suddenly wanted stability, love, commitment, a family, and, well really, a home.
It's funny how you can find a home in another person.
Being a part of this internship program caused in me intense inner reflection, confusion and doubt as to what it is I really want for my future and how it will or can work. I gained extensive understanding of the hardships of being away from those you love and committing to leaving that which you call home. I have yet to conclude what the magical balance of personal and romantic dreams will be in my life, but I have come to know that while I may be a bit of a drifting wanderer maintaining a home is important to me.