for the past four and a half months i have been living with my sister and brother-in-law in their rather small 2 bedroom apartment. they recognized this as an uncertain time in my life and offered me practically free rent for a few months until i was able to get on my own two feet again. they have been wonderful. they have given me a place to stay, helped me raise and care for my puppy, given me family and community when i needed it most... but it's time to move on. this temporary situation has run its course and now it is time for me to be on my own once again.
a lot of me is excited by this move, by the prospect of having my own place. i've never lived alone before- minus the month i spent in minnesota after carl left... so i'm excited to decorate and play loud music and walk around naked. but change also brings introspection for me. i begin to question yet again what it is that i'm doing with my life and what it is that i would like to be doing...?
things i do know:
i want a house. i want an old run down house in some relatively urban area with a fenced in yard and lots of windows and creaky wooden floors and old radiators. i want to be in that house for years and years- whether i own it or not, i'd like it to feel somewhat permanent. i'm tired of moving and thinking about moving and re-establishing a life every few months. i want to dig in the earth and plant some serious roots.
and i want a garden with real crops so i can learn to can vegetables and dry flowers for tea and prune fruit trees and build trellises. there should be chickens wandering the yard, mingling with a tall runner duck or two and someday maybe a milking goat with long ears and a beard. i'd like to conquer my fear of bees by keeping some and gathering their honey.
what's more, i want to share my life with someone. i can survive a lot of things alone out of necessity- but one thing i've learned about myself is that i'm built to go through life in a pair. i work much better as part of a unit and i enjoy my experiences all the more when there's someone there to share them with. i want to garden along side a companion, to stay up late laughing at the tv and share ice cream with, to learn things from and teach things to. i want a partner for my life.
so now that the move is once again upon me, i question... 'where do i begin?' and 'what am i waiting for?' i don't have any financial means for securing a house like the one i described, so i've been making do with renting year to year. but i should really just pick a place and stay, i have trouble deciding where to pick though. places i know i do not want to spend many years would include, the chicago suburbs- where i am located currently, due to their over-homogenization and ridiculous prices; minneapolis- where i was before, due to it's long and grueling winters which causes gardening to be short-lived and biking to be somewhat impossible half the year; downtown chicago- i suppose should be included only because houses are rare in a city of that size and prices again would be astronomical, plus there is very little greenery to be enjoyed that's not fake or human-cultivated.
so that leaves warmer climates to be explored, which directly implies the moving away again from family and old friends.
when should such a drastic change happen? and am i strong enough to make it on my own? how do i know when to stay and invest in relationships already formed and when to go in search of newness?
i should also practice my gardening skills, learn more farming techniques and the art of raising chickens. i should continue to write and maybe take a business class or if nothing else, an auto mechanics class to keep progressing toward future goals. i should spend my days off being productive with my time and my future. i should, but i find it hard to get motivated when future liz seems so far off.
on a completely different note, i've decided that this is not the best time in life to be cultivating a new relationship. there are so many stresses and life pressures weighing in on my every decision, stresses and pressures that unfortunately get transfered to him (and vice versa), causing one of two things... either we live in a dream world where real life decisions don't need to be made and we never actually progress forward in our endeavors, or we put pressure on each other to be more than what we are to one another and jump too quickly into something we may not be ready for in the long run. i've done both those things before- neither way ends well. but what are 20-somethings supposed to do with their love lives then? ignore them until all of life's situations get worked out? or date and hope the other person wants to live life like you do?
what i wouldn't give to be 30 and know a little more about how to do life.
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