Should I stay or should I go now?
“Life is just a ride, and we can change it whenever we want to. It is just a decision between fear and love.”
–Bill Hicks
This is haunting me. Its undeniably true. At every moment I’m making a decision between doing things out of love or fear. Really it should be words I live by, daily, because it rings SO TRUE to my core. It’s time to be more conscious of what my decisions are based on and to be as brave as I really want to be. This life is running out. Every month that goes by I feel this more acutely. I understand that it’s not that I have a soul, I AM a soul. I HAVE a body. I understand that this life energy can’t just disappear, it can only transform into something else once I “die”. But at the same time, I value this particular life so much for what it has given me. For everything I feel and learn. I am grateful too that my dreams have taken me so many places I could have lived many lifetimes already. But still, what am I going to do with this one life?
Sit in Pennsylvania? Endure yet another freezing winter I promised myself I wouldn’t do again, so that I don’t lose US residency, waiting it out till I can apply for citizenship in November? Or will I throw all caution to the wind, lose my rights to come back and make home the next place I go? I am afraid to let this all go. It’s sortof home still. In a way. Well. I’m still paying taxes here for sure. Half my closest friends live here, my beloved US family, my US moms, my sweet sister… Aah crap. I’m going in circles with this every day. Dammit! I wish I hadn’t been so blase about my status in this country and applied for Citizenship years ago when I was married, when I was supposed to. I wasn’t worried. I just never imagined a scenario where we would split. Where I might want to spend most of the year outside the country and travel for a bit. I was happy to just be able to live here with my husband at the time and it just wasnt a big deal. Now its a huge deal. HUGE.
I already did this once before, left the UK weeks before I was eligible for citizenship, for love, to come to the States, now I can’t return to the UK except as a tourist for a short stay. IF I have a fat enough bank account AND my visa application is granted. I can safely say that I made that decision out of love, not fear. Also, though, I don’t regret it one bit.
So if I go, I could lose the right to return to the States, and along with it, every sure thing in my life right now. Which isn’t much, but its enough for me to feel reasonably safe. Life is pretty stable at the moment. I have a place to stay with a rad friend, its cheap, its warm, my bag is on the floor so its home, its snuggly with my cat and they love her to bits, time is flying and I’m advancing towards November any day now, and then the application process should hopefully take a couple of months longer.
But also, life is flying by. And along with it, choices made from Love. The choices that I REALLY want to make.
Phil
Do whatever strikes your fancy…and don’t cut your hair.
} bird {
Thanks Smoky… hehehehe
I might some day lose it, who knows what might happen. But I won’t ever cut it. Ever.
} bird {
thi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn’t believe my eyes or my luck when I saw you had commented on my little website! For the longest time I didn’t even know if you had read any of these things or ever would, but I continued to write anyway, hoping that somehow you would just feel me connecting to you on another plane, loving you, always thinking of you. I have always believed in our connection. How you always know the second anything huge happens to me. You have never missed a single time. You are always there.
I am so grateful for learning this lesson about love and fear even more acutely with you, through disasters and successes we navigated together. And I am so grateful for the mainstay of our connection and love, the only sure thing I have felt since leaving my home, even through the silence.
While wondering when I would see you again I heard myself think without thinking, “I can’t wait to learn patience!”
How typical.
How I adore you.
thiago
This is undoubtely the most deep thing I’ve came to learn from you. I remember it every day.
It rings so true to me too, if it’s not for love I’m driven by fear. Think in any stupid (or not) decision that you can make in life such as light a cigarrete or taking an airplane and you will be able to identify these two elements in different proportions surrounding your thoughts by the time you do the choice.
How many times I failed to pull you close everytime I took a decision out of fear (even of losing you) and how you spontaneously enclose yourself when I was not afraid, loving.
thank and love you
thi
} bird {
Wow Bronnie, thanks for taking so much time and putting so much thought into what you wrote. Ideas seem very hazy at the moment. My instinct keeps telling me to be patient and wait for the perfect time and that the plan is slowly revealing itself, and my head is so anxious and impatient.
Mercury goes retrograde on the 30th with the tail starting the acceleration towards it today. it won’t be a good time to travel, for making plans, or for communication for weeks after that. I hope I am able to stay put for a while and focus on work and taxes and boring things I’ve been putting off for a long time so I can have it all behind me when Mercury finally makes its exit. I feel I will be ready to move after that. And I have a feeling that I will have an idea of what is going to come next.
Dragon, I think about Bisbee all the time 🙂 Knowing me, when it happens, it will happen at the last minute. And its GOING to happen. Some time 🙂 At the right time. Im just not feeling a strong enough internal indicator saying its right now.
dragon
life is short, but so sweet ……..
dragon
STAY ! come see me in Bisbee !!!!!!!!!!!!! that’s simple enough
Bronnie
” If I stay there will be trouble, if I leave there will be double ” can’t remember the title of this rock song OR
” Making waiting part of the journey ” – just Bronnie’s : )
552 months minus 6 months. 552 is the amount of months you have if you make it to the Shakesperean alloted time of 3 score and 10 plus another 10 thrown in for averages and modern medicine which equals 80 years.
Yes, you could drop off this planet into another realm at any second or you could make it further.
My point (I am getting to it), is that its just six months.
I can infer from your post that at the moment those 6 months seem magnified, hyper real in the sense that every second spent in the US can be viewed as a loss, a precious and excruciating waste because you can’t be where your heart wants to be.
Is there not another place you could go in the US so you don’t have to deal with the winter. I empathise completely our warm African souls can not handle the harsh northern winters. I don’t know the bureacracy of the whole thing perhaps you do have to stay in one place. If you are tied into staying in the US why not make it easier on yourself by being some place warmer in if you can.
If Love is a place – Omtepe – it is not going anywhere – it will still be as precious perhaps even more so for the wait until you can return. If Love is a person – can love not come to you? Can Love not come into to your situation even for a short space to make the wait until you can be together forever (if you both choose) after all strings of bureacracy and ties to country have been sorted and tied more bearable. Can love not adapt for your situation, for once, instead of you for it, not permanently, just for a short time.
Waiting may seem frustrating at the moment like helplessly watching time and love trickling down the drain of life but I do think the wait makes us treasure our reward at the end so much more. There was no immediate gratification rather a complete patient sureness of soul that what you got in the end is really what you want and need because you sacrificied a little of your time and life for it.
You will do what you need to do my friend and whatever decision you make will be the right one for you and I support you in everything.
As Always,
Bronnnie