But What If I Have Bad Dreams?

Okay, so first of all, I'm much better now. ThankyouAntibiotics. I'm not 100% mind you, which is what made last night (as I type this it is 4:30 in the morning, and I have woken and cannot seem to find my way back to sleep...) so interesting. Although I had plans to hang out with a friend last night, I made a last minute arrangement to help another friend out and babysit her kids. This may seem really generous, but she coerced me with a bottle of wine and even ended up paying me (and my friend and I still got to hang out because he came over for dinner after les enfants went to bed), so hold off on congratulating me too hard now. In any case, I sure did give my lungs a workout in the early part of the evening when I found myself chasing her three year old and her one and a half year old around the playground at the local park!

But that's really neither here nor there at this point. It's 4:35am and I am wide awake, and for the first time in over a week, it's not because I'm coughing.

Maybe it's my good ol' travel anxiety rearing it's annoying head again? I do leave to go rehearse in Montreal for a week on Tuesday, after which I will be back in Toronto for a mere six days and then off again to St Louis. FOR THE ENTIRE SUMMMER. Yep, it's the longest I will be away from anywhere I've called home since I left Vancouver to move to England/Toronto almost ten years ago now. And it's not like all those mini (as in, a few days to a few weeks-long) absences have been easy to do...

Oh, what is it that makes it so hard for me to leave?!?!

(Oh fine, fine, I admit that that's a dumb rhetorical question, probably only there for dramatic effect. I know exactly what it is that makes leaving so hard for me, and there's just not really a need for me to explore that here and now.)

So, before my friend left me with her kids this evening she told me quickly and quietly that typically before her three year old son goes to sleep at night he asks "What if I have bad dreams?" Thank goodness she told me what the correct answer is to that question, because quite frankly, after about 25 years worth of bad dreams and sleeplessness, I certainly still haven't figured out how to deal! Apparently the answer is: "you just roll over and think about all the people that love you." Unfortunately, I think that's precisely what's keeping me awake right now.

"All the people that love me?" Well, there's my super-close, joined-at-the-brain sort of best friend, Devon, who moved back here to Toronto (after a very long absence) so recently that we will be missing our first summer together in years, because this time I will be away. Um, and isn't the summer what we Torontonians put up with this city for the other 9 months of the year for? Uh-huh, sure is. And then there's Thea, whom I would probably count among the reasons that I moved to this city in the first place (post-England.) When I say goodbye to Thea in a few weeks, it will be for much more than just three months; because before I return to Toronto from St Louis in September, Thea will have left for grad school in Texas. And she's not my only best friend who won't be here when I get back in the fall. It's looking like my dear, lovely and talented friend Anthony will have his american work visa sorted out by this summer and will be moving to New York City, liklely in July. Mark's girlfriend Christie meanwhile is leaving in a mere few weeks to move permanently to Peterborough, which means that if she makes it through her three month "probationary phase" and doesn't hate it, she will be staying, and Mark will be joining her. I'm not even sure how to count that loss - it's like an extremely painful two-for-one deal. Nevermind the fact that Alison has already left, to be a CBC reporter in New Brunswick for the year, but I'm not going to fool myself into believing that her work will take her back to Toronto anytime soon after this first contract is up.

No, I must accept that the landscape of my life here in the T-dot is changing drastically, whether I like it or not. So, maybe it's a good thing then for me to be going away myself for a few months...? To begin to explore the definition of my own life independent of the community I've worked so hard to create for myself over the last ten years?

Well, if I have to.

And I do have to. And I can. And I will. And I will survive - most likely I will thrive even. And I will count among my lucky stars the wonderful community of loved ones that I have spread all across the globe. Sounds like a good excuse for some anxiety-free travelling now doesn't it?

Just one last question though:
What do I do if I have bad dreams?

"I DON' WANNA!"

Sometimes I think that Bronchitis is what happens when you deny the presence of a cold for too long; Karma bites you in the ass and suddennly you're too sick to even enjoy the lounging that is now required of you. One day I will learn the value of self-care, one day...

At least I listened to my friend Mark this afternoon, the first time he told me that I should go see a doctor. Albeit this was after several days of holding in and denying the total exhaustion and weakness that I've been feeling. I knew I was sick, but for some reason I just have this knee-jerk "I'm fine/Don't worry about me" reaction whenever I could actually really use someone to take care of me... In any case, I happen to be in Oakville with my, uh, 'almost-parents' so at least I'm being taken care of. Now that I've finally admitted how awful I feel.

This afternoon, as Holly and I sat in the waiting room of the local walk-in medical clinic, we watched as a mother struggled with her clearly unhappy 3 year old daughter. I'm not sure exactly what was wrong with the little girl, but it can be assumed (since we were sitting in a medical waiting room, and based on some of her mother's comments) that the little girl was sick. And sickness is typically uncomfortable. Hence her whining, and wailing, and occassional flailing. "I don' wanna see the doctor" she said calmly when her mother threatened her weakly with "I'm going to have to take you out of here and then you won't be able to see the doctor, and we won't be able to make you feel better..." Nice try mom. I could practically see the little girl lighting up at the thought of getting out of this stuffy and unpleasant waiting room. I wasn't exactly having a grand time myself.

As I watched this little girl, only slightly annoyed by the disruptive nature of her vocal displeasure, I mostly longed for that freedom of emotional expression that comes with being a child. Sometimes I long to be able to throw myself down on the floor and give voice to all my fear, anxiety, frustration and sadness with a hearty wail of "I DON' WANNA!"

And as my departure for St Louis (where I will be spending this summer, performing in a kids show) grows nearer, and my typical pre-departure travel anxiety begins to quietly set in, I find myself longing for an outlet to even gently whisper "I don' wanna leave my friends for the summer..." especially when so many of them won't be here when I get back in September, thanks to grad school and other wonderful life-moving-forward kind of opportunities.

Oh yes, there's lots I could whine about right now. But I think for the most part it's just the fever and the tightness in my chest trying be heard... So hopefully with this blog post, I've gotten a little bit of that out of my system. Next up: the mucus in my chest (Oh, SORRY! Was that too much information?)

There is only one Today

As many of my very good friends already know, I suffer from what I have come to refer to as my severe "travel anxiety". I'm not afraid of flying, and I actually love to travel and have new and exciting adventures, but there is something about the thought of LEAVING that fills me to the brim with anxiety. I have come to attribute this partly to my own "control issues" (if I'm not around, I can't control what is happening... Which I realise is a joke in itself because AS IF I can actually control life as it unfolds around me when I am home! Ha!) and also I think it may have to do with the fact that early in my life, some terrible things have happened when I have been "away". In any case, I seem to forcing myself to confront these "travel demons" with vigor these days, as I have travelled both to Las Vegas and Vancouver within the last 3 months, I am about to leave again for New York City in 3 days, after which I will be home in Toronto for a month before I leave again to work in the south of France for 4 monhts this summer! Add to that a little road-trip to Vermont that I will be taking sometime between NYC and France, to visit my friend Robin with my friend Sarah, so that this Best Friend Trio can be reunited in the same place for the first time in about 5 years!

So yes. I am confronting the "travel demons". But that doesn't mean I'm not totally flipping out about it. My hands are shaking as I type these words right now. I've only been back home in Toronto since Monday afternoon, and I have to leave again for NYC on Saturday morning. While I am here I am desperately struggling to sort out all sorts of beurocratic details pertaining to French and British work visas (I will be working for a UK company while I am in France, you can check them out at: www.pgl.co.uk, I will be working at the centre called "Hameau les Ages" this summer - totally adorable looking!), school applications (even though I'm not even sure I want to go back to school in the fall, I am sick of wondering all the time about it, so I have just decided to go for it and apply to go back to theatre school and/or teachers college - you know, simple application processes, Ha!) and I'm also trying to make time to spend with the people here in Toronto that I love and miss when I am away... Did I mention that another one of my best friends is flying in from Halifax tomorrow and I also want to be sure to have some time with her before I leave on Saturday morning? Oh my.

Anyhow, it's so great to be home. I love my apartment. I love that Toronto is my home. I love my friends here, who really are essentially my family. I love this life that is MINE. My sweet friend Mandy just called me, and we haven't spoken for about 2 months now, and it was great to chat with her. I caught her up on all the crazy ups and downs that have been my life for the last few months and then admitted that I was feeling a little bit anxious at the moment. She wisely said to me "Meghan, it sounds like you are doing great. You're doing great things... just live your life. You will only ever have ONE February 28th, 2007, so just live it and make the best of it." I think that I was meant to get that particular advice at this particular moment.

It's great to be home. I am going to go now and try to enjoy it while it lasts. Next time I write will likely be sometime next week when I am in NEW YORK CITY - woo hoo!!!