"It's time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now."
I've been trying to make sense of what living here is making me feel.
I'm proud, satisfied that I made it through the process and moved here. I'm happy, excited that I live here, although those don't feel quite big enough. Those are the labels of accomplishment. Goals achieved. To-dos crossed off a list. I've had far less difficulty labeling the sensations related to wanting to move to and live in Spain than the emotions related to the being here. Labeling those has proved far more elusive which has been surprising and unsettling.
I, wrongly it would seem, assumed I would be awash in the excitement, the thrill, the thrall of "being in Europe." But it occurred to me Sunday afternoon, when I was absent-mindedly staring out my bedroom window with no plans, means to make plans beyond myself, or any definitive desire to do anything specific that this too was what it was like to be in Europe. And not an altogether uncommon state.
On the one hand, that's a pretty common state. Life isn't all racing laps. A lot of it is on pit lane, in the garage or under caution.
On the other hand, if it's not all racing laps, then, having made this move, am I wasting laps? Do this! Do that? Go here? Go there! Try! Explore! Experience! Get out there! It's a trap of my own creation. It's the same options as anywhere isn't it? Only the vocabulary has changed? And the furniture. As I said, it's a trap I fashion myself. Oh, everything's amazing. I went to Barcelona yesterday. I'm headed to Paris for a long weekend. I had this incredible dinner last night. I'm possessed with dumbfounded disbelief if the paragraphs aren't full of these sentences. I live an IG life in my head.
Which when solving the equation of recent thoughts equals disoriented being my state of being. And it's fatiguing. Trying. Bemusing. Natural. Nestled within a conversation with a woman I met recently was the admonition to really feel the emotion. Settle deeply with it. Let it promote change and growth. Distracted by the wine and her accent, I missed the message in the moment, but it surfaced in the sobriety and solitude of a rainy afternoon. Withdraw or stretch out? Protect or be vulnerable to experience?
"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
