I spend a lot of time thinking about Montreal. About everyone who is there now, about people who might be visiting and when. About the small possibility of living there again someday. Mostly, about when I can go next. Now, most of wanting to go is because I miss people and want to see them. However, there is another component to my constant preoccupation, and that is guilt. My cousin just announced that he got married. He was my best friend as a teenager, and into my twenties. I never even heard from him about being engaged. I heard about his new marriage on Facebook, and it kind of crushed me.
It's undeniable that I'm far away, and I have a persistent feeling that I'm missing things. And I can't help it. I made a decision to live here at a time in my life where I think that was right, a time where I should have made a change, experienced some new things. This is all very logical. Emotions, irrational or not, don't respond to logic very well unfortunately. The result? Wanting to be in two places at once, which is impossible. Feeling that I'm not doing a good enough job for people on either side of the world, which is frustrating and exhausting. I know, at least I hope, that the people I love on the other side of the world don't hold my decisions against me, and that all of this is coming from me. I think about all the turmoil that goes on in my head and my heart and it makes me feel helpless. And then, there's the other part of me, and that's the part of me that's...Not angry, maybe indignant. That besides my parents, who have done so much to support me and see me in Montreal, nobody has put any plans in motion to come visit me. I know in a lot of cases, that's probably not fair. But like I said, rationality and emotion are often at odds with one another in my life.
It's taken almost three years, and I have always liked it here, but now I finally feel like I have a real life here, and I'm happy. I've got a 'real' job, one that I can't just run out on anytime, teaching high school. Instead of making myself as scarce as possible socially, I am organizing nights out and get-togethers. I played social soccer. I think I've joined a band! I think a part of me resisted a lot of that, almost as if I was being unfaithful to my other friends, to my family, if I got too involved here. And once I settled here, it was like there would be no way to turn back. I guess I know now that it's not necessarily so cut and dry. Dave and I are a team. We could move back to Canada. We could stay here. But we have to be together and sure about what we do. I don't have any regrets, although I wish it was easier, that I didn't always see time flying by, and see life as a constant decision. I'm not so sure about what triggered this train of thought here. Maybe it's always an underlying current in my thoughts.
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