Current location:	in the dark I can be wherever I dream
Current mood:	{FOUR-ish}
Current music:	All I Ask // Vanessa Carlton

On leaving and punctuation marks.

I miss the smell and the adrenaline rush of getting lost in a new city. Everything feels so fresh, so vibrant, so new to your eyes. All of your senses kick into the highest gear to absorb all the new information: your eyes focus and pan and squint, adjusting f-stops to clearly read every sign. Your ears strain to capture the tiny chirps of foreign birds and the rugged sound of gravel underfoot. Scents from delicatessens waft about, fresh bread and pungent garlic quickly noted by your nose and activating your appetite. I miss traveling; it's a kind of getting lost that always feels more exciting than anxious.

Recently, I found myself at more crossroads than I believe humans are designed to bear...and I've been attempting to reconcile wants, needs, sacrifices, and dreams. This is the year that I am to become a Mrs. and while I have typically balked at most types of tradition and traditional ideas of commitment, it's one change that's bringing about peace in my heart. I'm excited, but it's a quiet excitement. One that moreso reflects on our history: a love that has grown up together, seen life and death, success and failure, heartache and joy...and while most people view marriage as a beginning, from my vantage point it feels like a nostalgic but beautiful end of an era. A period (or exclamation point) at the end of an eleven-year long run-on sentence. It's very fitting and I'm ... happy. It's strange to write that.

But the punctuation I'm more concerned with are the big question marks. Do we stay and start a very big but promising endeavor with several friends that could potentially anchor us indefinitely to our hometown? What about our familial responsibilities? Do I take off on any of the career opportunities presented to me? Schools? Do we run away to the city on the opposite coast or is it just a different set for the same play? Do we invest our time, our money, our creativity into building a house and a home? Do we risk spoiling and shattering our perfect visions of our dream cities by putting them to the test of daily ennui? When do we start...planning for...a family? Do we venture off to another country, bartering our boredom for the struggle of learning new ways to say the same old thing? Do we go anywhere else just to put off our problems by presenting ourselves with the ones we've already conquered in our own city...is that the definition of adventure?

I am thinking of picking up the bass guitar.
I just ordered a million bits of piano sheet music.
I am blessed to have options.

I like this person(ality).
She's quiet and introspective.
She's easily moved by music.
She craves playing the piano.

If in the middle of a vital conversation I chose not to listen, would that be okay? And if in the middle of a heated confrontation, I chose not to, would that be okay? And if I love you without reference to occasion, would you run away?

♥