How, you ask?
I got my hair cut and went out to eat.
Major letdown, right? Except that I got my hair cut at a place that gives it's customers wine while they wait and ate at a casino after my boyfriend won money at blackjack.
For some people this whole scenario is all in a day's work, but for me, backwoods midwest little me, I've never felt so out of place in my life. Except for the fact that I also felt comfortable as well. I know, oxymoron. But it was one of those days for me. You know, the kind of day where your clothes fit just right and your hair falls just so and you walk out the door knowing that everyone around you wishes they looked and felt as confident and sexy as you do.
I walked through that unknown casino like I owned the place with the new haircut for which I paid more than I ever have in my life. Then, on top of it all, I discovered that I won the recognition parking spot for the highest call quality on the floor at my job alongside a friend who actually deserves the honor. Total surprise, seeing as how only one of my scores really counted for that spot and I've only been on the floor for three weeks.
Finally, the cherry on top, I find out yesterday that my mom is having surgery on her uterus. Apparently the whole thing is coming out because they found some kind of growth and are checking it for cancer. Cancer. Just a few weeks after my dad has a minor heart attack my mom is tested for cancer, all in the same year as my new job and big move far, far away from my family. It would figure that once I actually left the state like I've always dreamed my family starts to fall apart medically.
Thankfully I get to go home to visit in a couple of weeks, though a mere four days is definitely not enough.
I always thought that going out of my comfort zone would be something more like competing for American Idol. Traveling alone to Greece. Starring in a movie. But no, getting a haircut at a fancy salon, going to a casino, living in a place where people invite their relatives to church to hear me sing... yeah, forgot to mention that part. On Sunday, the one Sunday I didn't sing on the worship team, one of our new members came up to me after to tell me her sister came expecting to hear me sing and I wasn't up there. She then proceeded to tell me that I have a beautiful voice. It's really hard for me to not get a big head, which is why a month or so off from singing will be good for me. Instead of worshipping I'm performing because I know how much everyone loves to hear me sing. It's good for me to take a break or I'll get conceited. It's just so strange after having lived in a place where I was always third or second best, or even lower, compared to my sister or someone from my school. It always kept me in my place, but here I'm a novelty. No one knows my family here, no one has heard them sing so for the first time in my life I'm noticed. Again, trying not to get a big head. It's not like I brag about it. It's just new. All of it. A strange, new world in which I don't feel I belong and which is nothing like I hoped my future life would be.
I listen to songs that take me to worlds I doubt I'll ever be part of. Big city life as a glam single woman. Vegas. L.A. to work in the movies. Spain. And yet I wish... wish I wasn't tied down here, wish I could pack up and leave it all behind. I looked seriously at quitting my job, my lease, giving my car to my sister, and packing all my stuff into a storage unit to go teach English as a Second Language in Korea this week. It was so enticing, the idea of leaving this all behind and going somewhere completely foreign. Moving to Connecticut wasn't a huge adventure for me, not when I had family here and vacationed here every summer. But Korea... I wanted to go in the worst way. But then I remembered the bills for my car, cell phone, insurance, and that I would have to pay interest on my apartment if I quit my lease in the middle. I remembered Neal, knowing that if it was what I wanted to do he'd let me go but that he would do everything he could to keep me here believing it was his fault I was leaving.
It's so hard to be a free spirit in a box, looking for every opportunity to start over, be a new person. It's more of a cage than a prison cell when you're never satisfied with who and where you are.
