i have been taking care of myself since i was 18. it seems like an appropriate age to move out of your parents house. but i’ve realized its an early age to move across the globe from your support group. whether i want to or not, i’ve chosen a life where i have no family, no roots and always ultimately no one to call if things turn bad. or no one to call when i’m just tired of doing it all by myself. since i was 18, i haven’t had the luxury of having someone come bail me out when i fall.
i didn’t exactly plan that i would be thirty years old in a country without a single person who’d stand by my me without question. no family and no one who i could turn to with some kind of a promise that someone would lend a shoulder to lean on. sometimes i get so exhausted of doing it all alone. to have done it all alone for so many years.
somehow, i guess in my dreams, though i never really acknowledged it, i had thought that maybe by now i would have a husband, a home and a family. as ridiculous as it sounds, i didn’t realize i even wanted any of those things until lately. and now i find myself pretty much singled out from all the wonderful people who got their shot at it. its like the party ended, we missed the last call, the lights came on and i was left blinking in the brightness. suddenly realizing everyone else had left with their partnes and i was left standing in the room with a handful of people who never found their place either and now we’re pulling straws.
i am also so far from allowing someone in my life, that i am very skeptic about ever accomplishing that dream of a family. and the fucked up part about that is that it’s the only dream i have in life, that i have absolutely no control over. i can’t make someone fall in love with me much like i cannot make myself fall in love with someone else. more than anything i think i am so emotionally injured, that i am far from letting anyone in my life, in any timely fashion, to ever make that dream come true.
i think maybe it has ultimately rendered me to become the awful combination of being so independent that no one can really ever become a part of my life or me theirs and at the same time so exhausted of always taking care of myself and having no one in my life who’d kep me safe or want to take care of me. I can take care of so much, i always do. but who watches out for me? my family resides across the globe and i have no one to turn to other than at the other end of the phone line.
Not to sound cliched…but I know exactly how you feel….When I turned 30 I didn’t go through any of the denial of getting older or any of those things. I felt a bit empowered, that finally people would tale me seriously (the gray hairs arriving helped i think). But I also had other thoughts….Thoughts that wow…most of my friends are married, have 1, 2, maybe 3 kids, a home, a dog a life,….they have it all. I never desired many of those things, all i ever really wanted was someone that wanted to share little adventures with me….If i had kids or did not wasn’t any of my concern, didn’t care about the big nice house….although i wanted the dog desperately….
It was out camping with a friend in northern Utah a few years ago when he said something that kinda sunk in. Exactly what you just described, and I feel the same. I have done everything for myself, by myself, since I can remember, what are my chances. My chances of finding someone that not only enjoys the same things, but remains separate, and individual, able to go off and do their own thing without me, cause if there is one thing i have learned in the many lost relationships of my life, it’s that i truly value my alone time.
I’d like to think that there is someone like that out there, someone with their own drum to bang …at their own pace…but also wants to dance to my chaotic beats from time to time, drag me kicking and screaming when im being lazy out to be productive. Who knows that i get moody from time to time…and just lets it be. It’s a lot to ask of someone to know everything about you…the good, the quirks, and the difference between needing a boot in your ass, and shoulder to cry on. And I really feel that as we get older, and we become more and more self sufficient, the less we are willing to let someone bang our drum for us…..”It’s mine, i made it, and your just not doing it right”….right now I’m on the path of trying…trying to let someone at least into my drum room…..its a quirky place indeed…..
Feel free to delete this….I probably would..:), although I’m thankful you opened this up for me to read….
Dear daughter
Wellcome back to your loving family. We are just waiting for you to come back and live life with us. And I hope you remeber that I am allways waiting for your calls just even to hear something from you. So you are not alone in this globe.
We love you !