Just Joined a wonderful web-community for Expats and I'm truly excited, it's almost as though I'm packing my bags already and on my way to the airport.  Alas - most things aint that easy else we'd be moving around like the Rajastani's Romani in the 14th century.  Funny, it was actually easier then...visas, passport...all that bureaucratic hogwash was simply non existant.  Hhmmm...I suppose death, starvation and running into bandits sorta balanced it out then yeah?


Anyway, So I'm trying to decide on a city.  I'm in deep-unbreakable-love with Madrid...I'm a City girl...it's just who I am...I there where the noise is ripe.  But; a part of me is looking for peace and quiet...but then why do I keep hobnobbing around Madrid and Seville???? NO idea.


I'm considering doing a regional tour in 2012, one month should suffice, it'll have to suffice because my paperwork will be complete by November 2012  so I had better have chosen well.

Tangles on the Edges

 

I've been through storms.  The kind that leave you feeling old, worthless and exhausted.  I have spent 10 years of my life spinning around, aimlessly, arms flailing ... never finding balance.  I'm not even beyond my mid-20's...  It's been long, difficult and sometimes, worthy of a quick, sharp "gunshot" end.  

My greatest weakness is that I cannot seem to let go of hope - I know, It sounds so melodramatic, but how else would one explain how Somalians can literally trek thousands of miles just to reach the borders of South Africa - find a new, better life?  How else would one explain away the survival of thousands in the midst of starvation and genocide?  How would one reason the survival of peoples in turmoil?  Do they just refuse to die?  I suppose some of us live more on hope than others - or rather, we recognize that it is hope that drives us.  Sometimes I wish it didn't drive me as much as it does.  Would I be here if the latter were even a possibility?  I'm not so sure.

What I lacked before, I have found - wait, that's a lie - it crept up on me slowly.  Something that can push and be pushed by hope.   Something equal  (if not stronger) to hope.  Something that is a combination of every key to success, achievement but most of all, survival :  Willpower.  And boy oh boy, has it been lit...an inferno inside of me.  I can actually feel myself burning as I come to grips with who I am, what I want and where I want to be.

Around 7% of the worlds population is born with everything they would ever need to do anything - no want or need unmet.  I'm one of the 93% mass left over from wars, famines, great depressions, segregations, assimlations, dictatorships, democracies, economic instability, mass actions, unemployment and debts - that is where I reside - somewhere in the middle; and,  I've come to realize this uncompromising fact today:  

• I refuse to live like this anymore.  
• I refuse to be boxed in any longer.  
• Four walls or borders or checkpoints - I've been each of these for myself.

It's enough now.

It won't be easy - nothing worth it ever is.