8:23 p.m. - March 31, 2008
domesticated
I wonder if I have domesticated myself. I was just checking up on old acquaintances on facebook (which I hardly ever do--check on acquaintances or use facebook). i was initially just looking to see where mike was, or catch a glimpse of what he was up to. you never forget the first person you slept with, i don't think, and every now and then i get the urge to reconnect with him, find out what he's doing, even though it's been a few years since we've been friends or even traveled in the same circles. and that led me to see what a few others were doing. a girl i went to bosnia with is in zambia right now, traveling between refugee camps and journaling the transition of an aid program from international to local hands. it is the sort of thing that, were i fulfilling my potential and following my passions, i would be doing. but, it seems, i suffer more than i realized from the same flaw as my boyfriend--excessive laziness. how is it that i am becoming that person i swore not to become. I have become sucked in. these days, i want a domesticated life. i want a car and a dog and to get married and to have children in five years; i want new clothes, and i look at houses and judge whether that is the size or color of a house i would want. i check in with the newspapers once every couple of weeks, and on international news once a month or so. i think more about gym memberships, getting thinner, running errands, ordering clothes, seeing my boyfriend, and feeding my cat than i do about rescuing girls from sexual slavery, beating the republicans in the elections, or traveling to central america. i vaguely remember this passionate, fiery, uncertain, insecure girl that i used to be, and i wonder, what happened to her? who was that girl who traveled to bosnia and taught english? who was that girl who was so passionately angry after seeing children tear-gassed at an anti-war rally?
when i look back, i can see two big relationships that shifted who i was. the first was with mike, and it wasn't the relationship itself that changed me. but when it ended, i fell out of the circle of friends i was in, and became, after drifting for awhile, sucked into one that had a great deal more drama (partially, i feel, because it was one that also contained girls). I never reconnected with that first group, and i was never securely part of the second.
The second big shift came as a result of the relationship i'm in now, and what happened as a result of it was entirely my fault. mainly, me abandoning all my semi-friends to spend every weekend with my new boy. that pretty much severed any remaining ties i had with people i had associated with at DU. Who are now off doing amazing things. And living their lives in, what feels to them, probably, a normal and non-unique way. But i envy them a little. Because from these brief glimpses i have caught, they are still following their passions. They are not domesticated. They have not allowed their lives, their relationships, to domesticate them. Or tie them down. I am remaining, for the time being, on hold until I move to the west coast. It is a stall, in some ways, and an excuse, in others, to say "i will follow my passions then, i will start over when i am somewhere new." But i am hoping that a new place will give me new life. Because i need it.
