i'm not responsible - we all know this...

i cant be trusted with responsibility - and if you didnt know it before, well you do now! ive been really busy writing for school - and its basically consuming my life. dont get me wrong - i got myself into this. i asked for this. and i am enjoying it, promise :) its just hard work... "if it was easy, everyone would do it" as my dad says.. yeah dad, i hear ya!

so anyways, apologies for the absence. im here! everyone can just relax :) ive been working a lot on my writing, particularly my memoir writing. my upcoming thesis will be a memoir piece, so im working on the baby version of that now.. let me just say - it is not easy! telling the truth - the total truth about yourself, and life, and what you have experienced, is very difficult. our class is basically therapy.. someone cries every week...its usually me (im a weepah!) ::if only you could here my awesome british accent on here..ill look into making that happen!::

the type of memoir im writing is going to tell like a story - not a boring biography. there will be scenes and characters and a plot. but its all memory. my memory. and putting all that out there is pretty scary. ok so - the piece i'm including today is going to serve as the introduction to my story - i hope to explain in my memoir my own journey to "home" - physical and inner home. real home. i didnt have just one home until i was 23 - i had at least 2. at the age of 23 all of my life belongings and my mail finally were at one place. it was a long road there, and it all matters.  and it all begins, strangely enough, by leaving - without much in tow. but, its the start, my spark to find home - inside and out.

so here it is - the first draft (there will be many more i assure you - writing like everything - is a long and dramamtic process!)

Everything Starts With a Spark

It was August 27^th, 2007 nearly a year to the day that we began planning our adventure. We arrived at the Raleigh-Durham airport in North Carolina at 1:37 pm and waited. I had nail marks in my left arm from where Haley had held on to me tight during the landing. It was going to be a long day, and I had already called shot-gun on a seat away from Haley, leaving Erin to comfort her ridiculous sister during the next four take-offs and landings. With any luck Haley’s Xanax would kick in soon, and we would get a good laugh out of all her “fear of flying” nonsense.  

With the closest thing I have to lifelong friends at my side, Erin, Haley and I embarked on what we hoped would be a life changing adventure.  I wasn’t there for the city of Raleigh and North Carolina was not my final destination. In fact, I wouldn’t finally arrive for twenty more hours and even then I would be on the move for the next three months. However, I happily embraced Raleigh-Durham for three hours. With my toes creeping over the edge of a major trip, I wanted to use my down-time wisely. I restlessly poured over our plans for the next few days, a habit I would continue even after our trip had ended. We exhausted the many gift shops and decided that better food was on the horizon (this was after all, not Atlanta - there wasn’t even a Chili’s). I settled on the floor next to my overstuffed backpack, complete with all my toiletries, digital camera, and two full days worth of clothes should my luggage get lost somewhere along our many legged flight to Greece.  I smiled at the dusty blue carpet under me, reminded instantly of my elementary school and hoped this tiny bit of nostalgia would carry on into airports abroad. Haley pulled out her video camera, and I was ready to outshine my 5am “were leaving Florida” performance earlier that morning. I was a hot mess then, there was no chance I looked any worse now.

“Ready? And action!” she joked as the camera rolled.

“Well, here we are in lovely Raleigh-Durham”, my fake drawl had Erin bent double on the floor, tears falling past her laughing grin. “It is around 2 pm and we are on our way!” I gave a lengthy and inaccurate weather report, followed by our airport activities, each segment interrupted by spurts of heaving breathless laughs.

“I have overactive tear ducts!” I explained when Haley commented on tape about the huge tears wetting my cheeks. Sometimes we were too funny for our own goods.

            I ended my segment with a Joey Tribbiani-esque “EUROPE BABY!” and the camera was carefully put back into its home within Haley’s bag.

I truly love airports, so I wasn’t upset about being in several over a twenty four hour period.  Just the opposite. Quite honestly, I was ecstatic.  Something about the no-rules dress code and the fuzziness your ears get from the pressure change and intercom conversations really makes me happy. My mom was a flight attendant when I was really young, so maybe my love of flying goes way back. Plus, moving sidewalks and indoor train systems are a phenomenon I wish I could experience every day of my life. When I was a child it was my dream to ride on one of the golf carts with the blinking yellow lights and the beeping noise when it was reversing. I still have not achieved that goal and I think I need to feign injury or travel with the morbidly obese if I want to even get close to that cart.

I spent a good ten minutes sitting on the floor in Raleigh-Durham reviewing every item I had with me. Camera-check, shampoo-check, sweatshirt-check. Haley could see the checklist scrolling in my brain.

“Dude, if you forgot it its too late”, she yawned. She was right. We were already hours from home and even if my family was willing to somehow mail me something, I would be nearly untraceable for the next three months. The hours stretched and curled into endless card games of solitaire, go fish, oh shit, spades, rummy, and slaps. Eventually the games would cross into each other and rules would be created and broken, but that was hostels, trains and cities away.

The voice over the loud speaker brought me out of my travel coma and as the minutes ticked closer the bubbles of excitement were harder to ignore, like champagne that knows its about to be uncorked. This was to be the first trip I had taken out of the country, and it was like our baby since we planned everything ourselves, and sadly had to pay for everything ourselves. My all-American dad still doesn’t understand my need for adventure and wishes I had spent the cash on something more productive.

And so we sat, with jitters and serious plans for the next several weeks of our lives outside what would eventually be the gate that led to our plane To Gatwick, London. From there we would take an hour bus to Heathrow Airport, at what we knew to be 2 o’clock in the morning, on the other side of London, where our flight to Greece would be waiting for us three tired and giggly girls. And as I sat in Raleigh-Durham, staring down the path of possible lost luggage and stale pretzels, I had to laugh and enjoy all I had there in front of me. Baggy sweatpants, bedazzled tank tops, and stripper high heels galore in the second of many airports I was to encounter in the coming days of my life. I knew I had to soak in every second because it would go faster than I wanted. I knew this was big. I knew that I was on the edge of something bigger than me and I was scared and excited. I had always felt like a painting that was made to hang but not touch, kept safe in the dried paint and canvas. And now, all that had been and all that could be was there before me.

sooo - thats where it starts. and theres much more to come -

stay tuned <3