Looking back (long rambling entry)

I am writing this in Dark Room. I’ve not used it in ages, in fact I’ve never really used it at all (I don’t have much use for writing tools) but it’s pretty, and calming. Especially when used in an actually dark room.

I slept for 15 hours last night. I think I might have had a bit of a sleep deficit. When I woke up I thought “wow, that’s a GREAT night’s sleep”… as in, 7-8hrs is a “normal” night’s sleep, so 12hrs is a GOOD night’s sleep and 15hrs will be a GREAT night’s sleep. But splitting it up a little differently, it’s actually TWO nights’ sleep! That’s kinda insane. It really shortens your weekend too, but since I don’t do much at the weekends anyway it doesn’t much matter.

I need to go shopping. I’ve not bought proper food in ages and both my fridge and my freezer are depressingly empty. This always happens after going somewhere – the week (or more) leading up to the trip I don’t really go shopping because I will be away, and then after coming back I drag it out for as long as I can, eating long ignored leftovers and boring canned food, until I really can’t avoid going shopping again.

Shopping always makes me so very tired – “dropping straight into bed and falling asleep” tired. The feeling subsides within minutes of getting home. This doesn’t really make sense as it’s not an activity I HATE – I dread it now because of the tiredness, but apart from that I find it slightly boring at worst. Goodness knows what’s going on there.

Sitting here in the dark I am much more aware of the sounds from Rita downstairs. Is this because my sense of hearing is heightened when there is less visual input? Or is it because I am still seeking distraction from “the task at hand” (entry-writing) and therefore subconsciously paying more attention to them?

So many questions that are of no importance whatsoever.

I have recently added quite a few people on Facebook (girls mostly) who used to go to primary school with me. Some of these I have not seen for decades – we parted company in July 1989 and I hadn’t really heard from or about them since.

Now I suddenly get glimpes of their lives – of what they’ve done since, and what their life is like NOW – and it makes me feel really weird. Most of them are married, and have children, they work as teachers or nurses. They bake cakes and build snowmen with their kids, and everything I see there is diametrically opposed to what I am.

A lot of the time it simply makes me glad I got away from Luxembourg, cuz I can’t imagine living my life like that. But that’s silly of course, because not everyone in Lux is like that either, and had I stayed I would not have become like that, and a lot of people in this country are in fact exactly like that too.

So what is it then?

Maybe it bothers me because this is the first time I’ve been confronted with these people since leaving for Uni. Usually, either one stays in touch or one doesn’t, and if one doesn’t then one is likely to never see those people again (until one meets at a retirement home, as has happened to my nan). Those who emigrate, well, that’s it, you leave it all behind.

The Internet has changed this. Now I can be HERE and get the status updates and photo uploads of THOSE WHO ARE THERE. Maybe it’s something to do with analysing your own choices… putting them in perspective in light of where you come from? You can take me out of the ghetto but you can’t take Luxembourg out of me?

I don’t doubt that moving here was right for me. I have to admit tho that I can’t help wondering how the people who chose to stay there think about me. Okay, I’m making it sound like “choosing to stay” was a difficult choice, “in spite of the odds” or whatever, when of course it wasn’t. Staying is the normal thing, leaving is what the oddballs do.

We discussed this at lunch the other day (with A and M) – marriages and pregancies of our childhood friends etc. They’re both from smallish villages in Germany (A West, M East). A said something like “I was excused (from getting married and having kids) by being the crazy actress who travels around.” M admitted that at this school reunion she’d been to she was one of the few people left with no kids.

So if we’re the oddballs, where does that leave us in the “big scheme of things”? Does it matter?

I probably shouldn’t care. If I look at the people I connected with at each stage of my life, they were always close to the person I was at that point (or they were what I needed at that point). Then, well, time moves on, you win some, you lose some, and when you turn 80 you hopefully have a nice story to tell, unless you die horribly from cancer, or an accident, or Parkinson’s beforehand.