Metaphorical Seismology
Sep. 14th, 2010 05:58 am![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cataragonEverything is slowly returning to normal. Or normalish, anyway.
For me, I'm finding the earthquake has changed a lot of my mental landscape, as well as the shape of the city.
We've been living in limbo so long it's become a sort of normal state, and the quake has shaken that up again. I've been without a proper home for a long time, and in the past few months I have somewhat replaced that with wrapping myself up in the safety and familiarity of the city. Now that has effectively gone, for the meantime at least. Without that, I feel less tied here, less content than I have been.
I had been seriously thinking about undertaking major changes in my life - moving cities, by myself, and studying to advance a particular career of my own. It would have meant living seperately from Dan for a long period - not something I would undertake lightly, but nonetheless an option we had been considering. We've done it before, after all.
In the quake, though, as the room moved, and I realised how big it was, I found peace in the fleeting thought that at least we were together. Whatever happened at that point, and it was so far out of my control, at least I was with the person who means most to me in the whole world. Maybe it's not something that would occur to someone without our history. I don't know.
Now, though, the thought of living in a different city, possibly a different country than him is much harder. I've been thinking about what it would have been like to go through this quake if he'd been on one of his trips, about what it was like to be on the other side of the world in 2001, when the whole world changed, and his workplace was considered a possible terrorist target.
And it's not even the big dramatic things - one of the blessings of having a partner is just having someone who lives through the same stuff you do - shares the highs and the lows and everything in between. You can share your lives long distance, in fact it's kind of essential, but it's not the same.
It's not that we can't do long distance. We can make it work. I just don't think I want to, at all.
And maybe I'm an idiot. I sure feel like the worst feminist in the world sometimes. But I just don't think I can prioritise my life that way at the moment.
So I'm reassessing options. We are reassessing options. Looking at things differently, trying new approaches.
It's like the earthquake shook us up and woke us from a sort of dream state. We'd been drifting along. I'd been considering this decision, but didn't need to finalise it for another two months. Now a whole lot of things have become clearer. Priorities and wants and needs and desirable outcomes.
I don't know what will come of it all, but things have definately dramatically shifted.
For me, I'm finding the earthquake has changed a lot of my mental landscape, as well as the shape of the city.
We've been living in limbo so long it's become a sort of normal state, and the quake has shaken that up again. I've been without a proper home for a long time, and in the past few months I have somewhat replaced that with wrapping myself up in the safety and familiarity of the city. Now that has effectively gone, for the meantime at least. Without that, I feel less tied here, less content than I have been.
I had been seriously thinking about undertaking major changes in my life - moving cities, by myself, and studying to advance a particular career of my own. It would have meant living seperately from Dan for a long period - not something I would undertake lightly, but nonetheless an option we had been considering. We've done it before, after all.
In the quake, though, as the room moved, and I realised how big it was, I found peace in the fleeting thought that at least we were together. Whatever happened at that point, and it was so far out of my control, at least I was with the person who means most to me in the whole world. Maybe it's not something that would occur to someone without our history. I don't know.
Now, though, the thought of living in a different city, possibly a different country than him is much harder. I've been thinking about what it would have been like to go through this quake if he'd been on one of his trips, about what it was like to be on the other side of the world in 2001, when the whole world changed, and his workplace was considered a possible terrorist target.
And it's not even the big dramatic things - one of the blessings of having a partner is just having someone who lives through the same stuff you do - shares the highs and the lows and everything in between. You can share your lives long distance, in fact it's kind of essential, but it's not the same.
It's not that we can't do long distance. We can make it work. I just don't think I want to, at all.
And maybe I'm an idiot. I sure feel like the worst feminist in the world sometimes. But I just don't think I can prioritise my life that way at the moment.
So I'm reassessing options. We are reassessing options. Looking at things differently, trying new approaches.
It's like the earthquake shook us up and woke us from a sort of dream state. We'd been drifting along. I'd been considering this decision, but didn't need to finalise it for another two months. Now a whole lot of things have become clearer. Priorities and wants and needs and desirable outcomes.
I don't know what will come of it all, but things have definately dramatically shifted.
