today Louise and i got ourselves up and went to the British Museum for a few hours for something to do, get out if the house and clear our heads - mine especially. it's a huge place filled of antiquities of more than a couple of bygone eras that have been looted and gifted over the last few hundred years of British Colonisation and Exploration - perfect for a bit of distraction. Louise loves museums, especially anything to do with Egypt (and there's a LOT of Egyptian stuff in the BM, including what's left of Cleopatra to whom we paid our respects), and i needed to get the fuck out of my own head lest i drown from trying to swim through the murky depths and junk. when we got back to base-camp i sat down and wrote the reply to the email i'd received in response to the call for clarification i'd sent out on Sunday. i'd received it first thing in the morning, read it while i drank my coffee and commenced to stew on it for the rest of the day. by the time i was finished over three and a half thousand words had crisscrossed the internets, and the biggest, most tenuous thing i'd used as a crutch for the last nearly half a year was gone, dissolved and revealed as fantasy and self-deception.
9 months ago i wound up catching up with a girl i'd known on and off for a while. a month or so later we were an item without ever intending to be. a month later i'd fallen for her harder than i had any right to given the circumstances and then 5 months ago i kissed her goodbye on her doorstep, climbed into a rented 4x4 and drove to Sydney on my way out of the country with a little piece of her riding shotgun in the back of my head. i've jokingly referred to it as being one of the most foolish things i've ever done, but then i've done a lot of stupid things in my time so perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration. today she told me "come back for you, not for me".
we've kept in touch here and there since i flew out - an email here, an IM chat there. i sent her a Valentine's Day message from Inverness while sitting in the common room of the hostel. before i left i told her that i'd be back for her and while the black on my boots has faded the feelings behind my promise didn't. when things have been fucked up and i've been in a pit of despair thinking about going back one day and finding her has kept me moving - my little Get Out Of Jail Free card. she said to me, one night out on the balcony when i was having doubts about my impending departure that "[i] seem to be under the misapprehension that there's something that won't still be here for [me] when you come back," and that stuck with me like a Kick Me sign. turns out that it may not have actually been worth the paper i'd written it on and now i've got no one to blame but myself for my presumption.
last Thursday we wound up having a long chat on IM and it all came out. for a while now i've been questioning the wisdom of hanging around here watching my slush fund trickle away while i sit around getting rejected for job after job and was thinking about making a move - go travelling for a few months before heading back. it wasn't really my ideal solution, but the idea of showing back up in Canberra and on her doorstep with a bunch of flowers and a bucket of Hoboken Crunch had some appeal. what i needed to know, though, was whether an hour later i'd be sitting on her couch exchanging stories and kisses, or out the back of Shadow's place with a hot mug of tea and tears running down my mug, and i REALLY needed to know this BEFORE i pulled the pin and flew half-way around the world. after a couple of hours we hadn't come to a conclusion and agreed to reconvene on my Sunday morning.
Sunday morning became Sunday afternoon and she wasn't answering her phone. i'd bought some SkypeOut credit so that i could call her mobile from here without destroying my credit (and got to test it the day before with Shadow, which was nice) and she wasn't answering. turns out she'd been exhausted after along day and was asleep before i could get out of bed, 11 hours behind, so i sat down for 2 hours with mug after mug of coffee and wrote it all down asking please. the next morning her response came saying "no". i'm not upset with her - it was always on the cards that something like this would happen, and in the finest form of trip it has. doesn't stop me from being gutted. it wasn't an "i don't care for you", more, a she put it:
"it doesn't much feel like our paths are lining up."
after our IM discussion on Thursday, on Friday night i booked a long chat with Louise to find out what she had planned. her job had just finished and i wasn't sure what she was thinking with regards to hanging around here. i gave her the rundown of what i was thinking - that i'd give it a little while longer, go with her on the trip to Egypt she's planning then spent the spring and early summer backpacking Europe. she told me that she wasn't going to be able to afford to come on the Eurotrip, but she'd be staying. find a place to herself and settle in, or if cash got too tight go and stay with family either in London or Manchester. i couldn't say what i was hoping to hear - i've no responsibility to hang around with her, although if she'd been thinking of pulling that same pin i knew i'd be able to walk away with a whole lot less guilt. my pack-leader instincts have been telling me to look after her, and as much as it's usually been unnecessary and much to her confusion i have done in my own way.
the loudest thought i had in my chaotic head was that if the girl i left behind had said "come home" i would have - gone for my wander through the continent and make my way back to the place where the constellations are familiar and the roads call out to be cut up by a pair of tyres. instead, she said "don't", taking with her my easy out.
now i'm sitting in the kitchen again pondering my increasingly unknowable future. now that the main impetus for my return is gone, should i still pack my bags and fuck off out of this place that i've come to love so much? the feeling i get is that if i wound up back in Canberra next month i'd go stir-crazy, but staying here may well send me insane. as The Clash (and B.A.D. covered in the years of my youth) said, "should I stay or should I go?" i don't know any more. i can't decide. 2 days ago i thought i had a clue... or at least, that the decision might conveniently get made for me. now i have even solid ground to stand on. in these situations i tend stay the course - sit still if that's what i've been doing, else keep putting one boot in front of the other. let the universe push me where it will, and since it seems to have gone to such great lengths to utterly confuse me i guess i'll just have to keep going around in circles until it gives me another nudge in whatever direction i'm sitting here waiting for.
whatever the case, tomorrow's another day and i'll assess it when the sun rises, and again the next and the next after that. don't make a decision without enough data, unless the clock's ticking and i still have all the time in the world and while there's a gap in the back of my head i know that "not now" doesn't mean "not ever"... it just won't be something i'll let myself rely upon, or even think about until one day i cross the ACT border on my own terms and in my own time. between now and then there's still things left i have to do, or have done to me. only time will tell.
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