I don't think I will do this. I believe it will be prohibitively expensive. When I was under the impression that there would be a lot of camping, it seemed more possible. But with 2 or 3 months of nights in hostels, buying food as we go, ferries, plane tickets... I don't think it would work with my teeny tiny grad student budget. And I don't feel like looking for someone else's money. I think I'm already tired of the idea. I'm tired of insisting I can do it. Well, people, believe in me or not, I don't care. I have nothing to prove. Not to you.
No more plotting, no more blog updates, no more saving money just to pour it into a black hole. What was my dream for, then, if it wasn't meant to be fulfilled? Distraction? Gaining admiration for my audacity? To focus on something in the future, a future that stretches out full of unfulfillment before me? What are any of my dreams for anyway?
My grandmother was schizophrenic. I've always feared waking up one day with voices in my head--it skips generations, after all. Now, in my mid-20's, I'm past the danger point and will probably never develop schizophrenia, but I have warring factions in my head anyway. They both speak with my own voice, but they pull me in different directions. The battle is gaining momentum as I get older, and I don't know how to create peace inside. One side is my "real" life. The other side is the dreaming.
My "real" life includes school, church, career, friends, family, all the things I do on a daily basis. The dreaming is the other side of me. When I go LARPing or to SCA events, when I read my fantasy books, when I listen to my music, when I dress up, when I make crazy plans for the future, these things are all part of my "dreaming" life. These things don't seem to touch reality. Sometimes they serve to distract me from it, in good ways and in bad ways, both. But in the end, they are just dreams. I can leave them behind and still live real life, but when I focus too much on the dreaming, I start to lose touch with the real. The real is outside of myself and connects me with other people, the dreaming is inside, sometimes very deep inside. Sometimes I run to it and throw myself into its embrace. And sometimes the dreaming pulls on me and scares me. It scares me, like a nightmare that won't shake off with the dawn.
You know what I want for next summer? I want something real. I want a life. I don't want dreams and trips and fantasies that don't add up to anything. I want to get started with the things that really matter.
It's like I was born in the air, and now I'm grasping for the solid ground. How backwards is that?
