zebras don't exactly change their stripes

"with every sun that sets, I am feeling more like a stranger on a foreign shore with an eroding beach disappearing from under me... i always fall in love with an open door

with a horizon on an endless sea as i look around at the ones who are standing right in front of me. "

 -Death Cab for Cutie, My Mirror Speaks

Turned onto this amazing blog by a sorority sister, I have been enthralled with this random stranger's journey.
I cannot help but feel envy as I search the pages of photos and stories nor can I ignore the similarity between myself and this person who I will never meet. My lust for travel cannot be matched, must less understood by a majority of the people that I know. But it goes beyond that. It's not exactly something I can describe with the limiting conventions of language. I stumbled upon a page asking, "How do we know when it's time to go home?" And for a solid hour or two, I pondered this exact question.
The concept of home, however strange with an ever-changing location and perhaps evolving definition.
Where is my home? Is that where I am, home? In a large suburban house full of nothing except junk, antiques, multiple china patterns, stuff and lurking memories around every corner of tears, drunken escapades, hugs, conversations lasting until after sunrise, nights spent sound asleep and nights spent tossing and turning without sleep at all.
Surely, I am still in search of home. I could find and make home out of anywhere. Home is where the heart is and my heart is fractions across the entire world. Part of it is in Vienna. Part of it is in California. Part of it in Alabama. Part of it has to be saved for wherever I end up in the future. Won't where I attend law school, where I practice law, where I work, where I raise a family all be considered, "home"?
Or maybe, I am just confused and little do I know that my suitcase heart is just a girl waiting on a slow-pony home? Back to here.
It is my intention to spend the next year answering this question. When it is time to go home versus when you cannot take it with you. Although, I liked one response that said something along the lines of, it is time to go home when you are more inspired and thrilled at the thought of comfort and stability than of the next adventure or new experience. Will that sentiment ever fill my body? Certainly, at this moment, the opposite is true. And I suppose that is why I am on the front-end of a year of travel instead of on the other end.

As the day of my departure back to a country where I believe I left a small portion of my heart encroaches, more and more people are asking, "what are you afraid of?" or "are you starting to freak out?"
I could not answer it better than my new best friend, Daniel elegantly expressed here.
My favorite part highlighted in blue and Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V'ed below:

“Daniel, I’m so excited to see where you will go and who you’ll meet and what you will eat. But to be honest, I’m also really curious to hear about your fears. I want to know what they are and how you’ll navigate them.”

When it comes to questions posed to me about my trip, the popular inquiry is about my destinations or my trajectory, which makes perfect sense considering a travel-based project such as mine. But for Ashley, as she admittedly jostles with her own big life decisions, she simply wants a reference point from someone else who is in the flux of reconfiguring life.

                                                                             How does one deal with the fear of change?

There shall be no shame in asking this question.

he goes onto say this: 

There are certain fears that one might infer when pondering the idea of long-term international travel. Many of these fears I recognize, but for one reason or another do not resonate on any sort of debilitating level. For instance, I’m not specifically afraid of being lonely, for loneliness has been present when I was not traveling. I’m not afraid of having my camera or computer or personal items stolen, I have mentally prepared myself for this to occur at some point during the journey. I’m not afraid of being hungry or without shelter, as I have a general faith that my fellow humans will provide for me at my most vulnerable moments. I’m not afraid of being hijacked and murdered by disgruntled Columbian terrorists because, well, I’m not planning on going to Columbia. I generally believe that anything tragic that could happen to me on the road could also happen to me (in some form or another) crossing the street in my hometown.

So what are the fears?

My greatest concerns revolve more around what will happen to me after my travels. These fears are most relatable, I feel. Such as, how will I financially support myself in the future? Who will take care of me if I become permanently ill? Will I ever reestablish the wonderful and illusive trifecta of employment, apartment and friends I had somehow been fortunate to obtain in Montreal before leaving? How do I deal with all the unknowns of life?

I guess what I’m arriving to is the idea that travel is not that scary. But life is.

And if I am forced to really focus on travel-related fears, I suppose there is one great concern. It reads like this: In the “me-centric” pursuit of this dream, I fear the dynamics of my relationships with family and friends will change. I’m afraid that this absence is asking too much from them. 

then, he ends with this:

So, I move forward. Putting relationships to the test. Prioritizing “individual” over “community.” Wondering who will still be cheering me on after this journey. Breaking my mother’s heart, once again. Feeling intuitively guided, and making few apologies for my decisions.

And in my moments of self-doubt and wondering if I’m making the right life decisions, it helps to bring out the old “scale of life.” Each time I balance the concerns of leaving versus the potential personal profits, when I weigh the prospective gains against the conceivable costs, the scale keeps pointing to a simple (minimally fear-laced) sentiment:

Go. For. It.

and excitedly, this marks the end of my alphabet challenge. in case you missed it, the last 27 posts have begun with a letter of the alphabet starting with A and ending with this one, Z. it was not an easy task, but it was done. 

getting hitched and quitting drinking

this summer (from May until August) I know SIX people getting married. i have been cynical. admittedly, i have been a bitch. i have ranted, complained, expressed my opinion, lamented, questioned, doubted, stalked, gossiped, and been filled with joy for these friends that i have known a very long time to their face and behind their back. from learning about the potential of the impending engagement, to hearing the details of how the question was popped, to inquiring about wedding details, i have attempted to be supportive and i have likewise blatantly expressed my apathy or concern. oddly enough, feelings of approval or disapproval aside, i will not be seeing any of these brides walk down the aisle. my only connection to the actual celebration will be via Facebook. i cannot group all six of these in the same category of how i feel because that would be unfair to these friends. as certain as i am that none of them will read this, i owe everyone an apology. however, an apology i am unwilling to give. instead, i'd like to offer an explanation.

i am young; afraid of commitment to nearly everything. i have no idea where i will be in three months. i have big goals and huge dreams to chase. i've got at least four years of school ahead. i've got serious trust issues with males (and females for that matter). as i've blogged before, i don't even always trust myself. at least once a week, i am mistaken for a child +/-10 years younger than i actually am. i am wrestling with who God is and who He is not. i could not guess my credit card bill within one hundred dollars. i want an extravagant and beautiful wedding that is the party of the year. most days, i could not create a list of bridesmaides i'd feel comfortable with. additionally, i'd like the engagement ring of my dreams, a paycheck of several digits in my name, letters after my name on a business card, property that is decorated in my taste instead of a flashback to The Great Gatsby. i cannot wrap my mind around knowing someone at this exact moment that challenges any of the above.
     Though I was desperately reminding myself all last semester of the phrase, "don't push love away. it's all we have" (The Juliana Theory) and indeed do not plan to be blind to the opportunities that do pose a challenge to the above first-person statements, I just needed to get all that out there. To say, "hey, everyone. this is where i'm at." I confidently chose this path. I stick by the decisions that brought me here with great pride but occasionally, I am harshly reminded that people I literally grew up with, have transported themselves to a whole new stage of life that I don't know a single thing about. I don't even know about the steps they took to get to that stage of life. I doubt this from time to time and identify with Ben Gibbard's words. "Will I have learned so very little when these bones are old and brittle?
 I wait to talk when I should listen and cloud mistakes with false revisions. 
All my friends are forward-thinking, getting hitched and quitting drinking. 
And I can feel them pulling away as I'm resigned to stay the same. 
I was once a loyal lover whose lips did never seek another's
But now each love's more like a match, a blinding spark that burns out fast.
And they all conclude with the same sentence: 'I've never met someone more self-centered who thinks that life with a nice girl's like waiting for a bus to work.
If you deem it so, just cut the cord and go.
You'll be fine, there's plenty of hills to climb."

So as people are continuing to get engaged more rapidly than i can keep up, in case your big announcement is headed my way soon, please know that i do love you deeply. and i am so incredibly happy for you. my wishes for a lifetime of bliss together is genuine and as sincere as possible. but i just don't get it. i don't understand and i cannot relate. as distance has already crept into our relationships by the very introduction of your significant other, i can only pray that the distance is not increased by your leap into a dramatically different stage of life than i am in. a stage i do not see myself joining for a long damn time. PLEASE do not become a bridge engulfed in flames behind me simply because I am not there yet. We will both be fine because there are plenty of hills (in all shapes, sizes and stages of life) to climb. I'll just be climbing the engaged and married hill long after others. But that's okay cause I CAN go my own way.

a deep thank you for reading this self-absorbed, rant. maybe i wrote it because i need affirmation. maybe i wrote it because i need to be told that i am wrong. that i am self-centered and jaded. perhaps i need to hear both. perhaps this is how you feel too.
#sorryimnotsorry

but they did and so did i that day

As a very typical me move, I told a boy in high school before we ever started dating that this song, Tiny Vessels by Death Cab for Cutie haunted me. I told him that I refused for us to have some meaningless, friends with benefits relationship that ended up in one of us hurt and identifying with these lyrics' story that disturbed me. In a mood for the depressing yet deep music unique to Death Cab on my long drive a few days ago, something compelled me not to skip this song, but to listen to it instead. Immediately the first line grabbed my attention and I ended up listening to it in its entirety several times. When the aha moment came, I thought, 'I might just cry over this.' Shortly after this thought as I allowed the words to slowly fill my entire body, an unexpected emotion came. Oddly, I was excited, because a good cry has been a long time coming. When tears caught behind my eyes and refused to formulate and fall, I was frustrated.
Instead, this "aha moment" resulted in me just being completely shocked and amazed at myself. Almost like I couldnt think about the girl from high school who so boldly stated no boy would ever listen to Tiny Vessels and think of her simultaneously contrasted against the girl who woke up and realized that's indeed without a doubt, precisely what had happened. Miraculously, I managed to walk away unscathed. I suppose this added to the shock of the enlightened moment. One would think such a realization would result in tears. Now that its 2 am, I am returning to these thoughts to test their clarity. But I suppose that if you build a home in your heart with rotten wood that decayed from the start, then you can't find nothing at all if there was nothing there all along (Crooked Teeth, DCFC). So in attempts of not plastering intricacies of what belongs in my journal on my blog, I'll leave you with the lyrics and the warning that, you just never know when life will sneak up on you and a wall you thought was cemented into place had begun to crumble when it wasn't so well maintained. Which ultimately, may not be a bad thing at all.

"this is the moment that you know that you told her that you loved her, but you dont. you touch her skin and then you think, 'yeah she is beautiful, but she don't mean a thing to me.' i wanted to believe in all the words that i was speaking as we moved together in the dark. all the friends that i was telling, all the playful misspellings, every bite i gave that left a mark. and tiny vessels oozed into your neck and formed the bruises that you said you didn't want to fade. but they did and so did i that day. 
all i see are dark, grey clouds in the distance moving closer with every hour. so when you ask, 'is something wrong?' i think, 'you're damn right there is. but we can't talk about it now. no, we can't talk about it now.' So one last touch, and then we'll go. and we'll pretend it meant something so much more. but it was vile. and it was cheap. and you are beautiful, but you don't mean a thing to me. yeah, you are beautiful but you don't mean a thing to me." -Death Cab for Cutie, Tiny Vessels

any, many, miny, mo, catch a tiger by the toe

decisions, decisions, decisions... all lead somewhere.

no place in mind, we shall arrive

Today, one of my professors said to a large group of seniors and freshman, "Don't worry about where you're going, because you don't even know." I thought to myself, wow, that's really inspirational. Then I thought, wait a minute. That scares the SHIT out of me. So I dont know where i am going. But that's okay. Because, with no where in mind, we shall arrive. and look up Joey Ryan because he is great. I'm convicted that from my small corner of the world I should shamelessly promote singer songwriters that deserve the spotlight. 

i left you to your own devices with failures weighing on your mind.

like a seed denied the water needed, you're wilted now, all but defeated.

worry not you told me, but i've seen unfold this story. 

strong and steady be your will, leaves your battered body cold and still. 

and i know, you know you need me now. my hand is soft and strong held out for yours to grasp it firm and scream you'll never let it go.

up the asphalt, back in time, no place in mind, we shall arrive.

its better to be on your way than sit and stay and melt away.

and i know, you know you need me now. 

my hand is soft and strong held out for yours to grasp it firm and scream that you'll never let it go. 

listen, i know you know that all along you're scared to hit the end head on.

 so place your weary hand in mine and don't you ever let it go.

cause even as your path may wind, keep me always on your mind.

open ward your heart to me, be not the door that has no key. 

make it good your chance at life, no where in mind, we shall arrive.

-Joey Ryan, We Shall Arrive

To the next person that asks, this is my public proclamation and warning, "What are you doing after graduation?" you WILL be slapped. so just, don't ask. i get very cranky almost instantaneously at such questions. and i might respond with, "i'm sorry, did you plan to be overweight and working at the student health center that is a complete joke of a medical facility at Alabama when you were 22? oh, you didn't? so, how the hell should I know?" thanks.