Though I've been super saturated with work on the series and Tribe, I've been in this very emotional state. Hormones? Who knows? But it's there and it's quite prevalent. It also happens to be pseudo-embarrasing, as I broke down in joyful tears on the middle of Flatbush Avenue this week. I saw my street cred dissipating before my eyes, draining down my face....
The nature of the positive tears?
The realization of the difference between dating someone who supports your travels, versus dating someone who engages in travel themselves. The conversation began with me referenceing my ex. An upstanding man, who I will always respect and show gratitude towards for standing by my side, theoretically, during the most mobile years of my life, thus far. For three years nearly, there were a lot of tears shed at airports, and me second guessing my need for travel, due to repeatedly leaving the man I was with back in New York. I remember coming back from Thailand specifically...I was drowning in travel withdrawl. The Tribe wasn't up (so I had no social community I felt I could go to), and my solem depression led me to set up a 'date' with my friend Xianix. I needed to talk to a traveling friend who would get it. This necessity for someone to relate to my feelings was mentally and emotionally exhaustive. This was one of the times I wanted so bad for the man I was dating to look me in the eyes and say, "I understand what you're going through."
Instead I got, "I'm sorry I just can't relate."
To no fault of his, I knew in my heart it was the beginning of the end. And as time would show, it was. No one had done anything wrong, but in one sentence I realized that his non-relation to what I was going through, and not being a traveler himself, guaranteed that he was going to be missing out on a huge part of my life, let alone the woman I was growing into. For the next few months, I drudged through my travel depression, called the few friends that I had who'd been abroad, and promised myself that I would 'go out' more in order to make myself 'feel better'. It was a very cloudy, mysty period. I felt like I was going though life, yet not living it. And definitely not sharing it with somebody else.
Fast forward 2 years later...relation appeared.
Unexpectedly, and with the full court press type of persuance, I find myself in a relatinship with a traveler. Someone who not only relates to the obsession, but taps his veins too. A man who not only wants to go on the trips, but has the buddy passes to make it happen. A love that started on foreign soil and developed domestically. Someone who doesn't mind sleeping in airports if it means catching the early morning flight. I am like a kid in a candy store. You mean to tell me that I have all this in one package of a man... and I can have sex with him too? (yes...I just said that.)
So yea, these joyful tears that were shed in the middle of a Jamaican restaurant in Brooklyn...warranted.
Thoroughly enjoying the upgrade from support to relation.
