By way of my father being my father, he found out that by the way of using American grant money for schools it could be cheaper than going to schools in the states to instead go to schools in Europe. Now many know of my love for France, but I do admit that my knowledge of the language that I have tried so hard to learn is no where near the levels for which I feel that I could get by in going to school in a place where the French language is the one and only language spoken in, but I do speak English which has a very close connection to France with the Chunnel. Meaning, namely that, possibly going to school in England could give me the opportunity to learn more while not throwing myself too far over my head...
I'm coming up on my two years in Seattle after my escape from Billings, MT, but I so constantly drift between love and hate for this place where I gaze amazed that I live in this place that is so very different from Billings, but yet in turn where it makes up for not being the home from which I never wanted nor fit in, Seattle is again somewhere else where again I don't /fit in/. I chose Seattle thinking that it would be the perfect escape but have found that the people are extremely hard to connect to. Passive aggressive. I came here alone hoping to make connections (hopefully that special one connection) but that never happened. From the people who it seemed that either one or the other of us fell into some form of love, but neither one of us actually fell together. Therefore this has left me open for yet another escape. No solidified strings. No romantic attachments.
So now I have this perfect, once-in-a-lifetime escape which could easily lead to me ending up in Europe (namely France) for the rest of my life if things pan out. Not even the rest of my life, but even an interesting portion of my life. Stories to tell in old age. Connections to make (hopefully easier than this Seattle thing has been). But yet, even though I have not made friends at every turn out here in Seattle I have made a few friends, good friends, friends that it would be hard to leave behind. My departure from Billings (though a year late for waiting for someone that didn't happen) was timed almost perfectly with the departure of most of the people that I knew, though most of them west off to Bozeman or Missoula it signaled the end and a good time to run away in one of my cardinal directions, as I did, and just continue instead of turning back.. This time the only thing that is going to be happening is that I will be getting my AA this June. No timing. No other friends with me. So now I can run off to England to study art. Art in a place where I can go look at it in person to study it... Further displace myself.
In short (though I doubt any of this explanation will be short) I'm freaking out. I love the city of Seattle, but I can't say the population really pleases me as a whole. Perhaps its the notion that I could have loved the city years ago, as I hear all the stories of back-in-the-day, but have a notion that with some squinting of the eyes I can ignore all the condos going up to replace beautiful buildings in gentrification. I found a place that I can call my own here in Seattle with people that I can refer to as a good friends, even if they are so numerous that they can't even fill up all the fingers of one hand with their names.
Maybe Taryn might one day follow in my footsteps, but then again perhaps not. She's living a completely different life than the one I lived, but all I can hope for is that in my wake I can actually leave some doors open for her to walk through.
*sigh* These past few nights have been pretty restless as I debate in my head how I will pull off running away to England. Baby steps have led me to already starting the design of my Seattle tattoo to represent my two years here... I wish that things could have turned out like I had hoped when I arrived on that sunny Seattle day, but by almost two years later I feel as though that the time to wander off has come.