Friday, February 23, 2007

Cuticles and the Peace Corps

I wonder if I should wax my arms. Some women do. Once when I was a kid at summer camp, someone made fun of the amount of hair on my lower arms, but on the other hand, everyone I think to ask nowadays says they never noticed my arm hair, and that I'm the only one that thinks it's bad. Or maybe they just don't want to hurt my feelings.

I was getting a mani-pedi today. I go to a place where they give you massages and all that stuff too. I read once how you're not supposed to let them trim your cuticles because that's one of the most frequent ways people get infections at the nail salon. Still, I just love having my cuticles cut. I love watching them use those tiny clippers and how the dead skin keeps collecting on the clippers until the last pinkie finger, when there is a whole lotta dead skin on them, and no longer on my body! It's a sort of purging, I guess. (It's probably similar to the feeling those people who love enemas get when they're done with those. Still, I'll skip trying an enema, thank you very much.) I wouldn't give up having my cuticles trimmed for the world, though.

Right now I am having an argument with myself about whether to leave my nice, warm apartment to go to the Irish pub down the road and hear Black 47. This will also attract some fellow Lamont alumni. However, having been sick with a stomach flu for the last 3 days, going out for a mani-pedi took a lot out of me and now I may want to just stay home in my hot pink and green frogs-holding-martinis pj's and drink some wine (or, depending upon how my stomach is feeling, Gatorade) while watching my latest Netflix booty.

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I did not go to the bar to see the band. I drank lots of water and now am attempting a gin and tonic to see how it does. I've been melancholy of late. Being homebound for 3 days can do that to a person. I know that if I were motivated enough I would have made it the 3 blocks to the pub tonight, but I were not.

I spent some time on the Peace Corps website tonight. It's been a long-standing dream of mine to join the Peace Corps. The best time in my life to have done so would have been immediately after high school. That was when I first decided I wanted to, and if I had, perhaps I wouldn't have majored in the wrong thing in undergrad. I definitely wouldn't have spent so many years with the Big X. Unfortunately, the Peace Corps really doesn't want you unless you have a college degree.

I nearly applied when I was about to graduate from undergrad. I had broken up with the Big X, even. It was a period in my life when I was recognizing that he was not maturing at the rate that I was and that if I stayed with him, he was standing in the way of some of my dreams. Smaller than standing in the way of Dreams, he was holding back my everyday life. It was a very tumultuous time in my life.

Within a period of two or three months, I researched and began the application process for the Peace Corps, broke up with the Big X, got engaged to another guy, ended the engagement, took the Big X back, and decided to give up on one certain path that my life might have taken so that I could pursue a future with him.

Now would be a perfect time to join the Peace Corps, if not for my mother's illness. I may have lost the anchor that was the Big X, but my mother's cancer is an even bigger anchor. The best jobs in my chosen profession are in NYC or DC. I cannot leave the state. I know it's a bit of a self-imposition. I could if I wanted to, so perhaps a better statement is I won't leave the state while my mother is ill.

It's a Catch-22. So long as my mother is sick, I feel honor-bound to remain close to her. So long as she's sick, she's alive.

The truth is, she will probably not recover. She may have a remission that lasts 3 months or 6 months, even 9 if we are lucky. But she--and we--are all biding time until the end comes.

Maybe that's all we ever do in life, and it's just so much more apparent in this situation, but still...knowing that things are as they stand, I cannot commit to 27 months outside the country.

So right now I put that dream away. One day perhaps the circumstances will be right and I will get to immerse myself completely in another culture, give of myself to help a community so far from my own. It's something I've always known I wanted to do.

I don't, however, think it will be the next chapter of my life either unless I give up once and for all on wanting marriage and a family, because of that wonderful timer God put on that activity. Kids mean, of course, devoting the following 18 (really more) years of your life to someone other than yourself. Which all means that when--if--I pursue that Peace Corps dream of mine, I will be one of the "older" members to whom they refer on their website.

Do I wish my mother weren't ill anymore? Not if the tradeoff is that she's no longer around. But damn, I wish that just once in my whole life I got to have ALL my options open. I wish I got to choose my own path--completely my own.

3 comments:

dan said...

All of us wish we could have control over our lives. And none of us do.

But we do have dreams for a reason. even if you never get control, sometimes you do achieve what you set out to do.

So hold onto it.

Anonymous said...

Dan's right, y'know. So I'll just say "um, ditto."

And not whine about hating when people are more eloquent than I. That's so beneath me. ;)

Anonymous said...

This is kinda creepy, but I randomly came across your blog after googling "hot toddies" and found myself intrigued by your life! Hope you don't mind the intrusion.

I just wanted to say - I do hope you find the time to join the PeaceCorps, I wanted to do this after I graduated from college. I was accepted, went through all the evaluations and clearances but everything hindered on one problem - My depression. I was on Anti-Ds for 2 years, with counseling, and even though I had been successfully off medication for a year, they decided it wasn't long enough and deemed me "less likely to complete the full term." They told me to wait a year and come back. But that of course means college loans must be repaid and what would I do with myself for a year? So I gave up. :(

I tell you all this because I want you to join someday, so don't tell them about your depression or else make it sound like it's something you conquered a long time ago.

Also, when they refer to the "older" people, they mean the retirees. A lot of people join the PeaceCorps when they retire. Even if you can't get your degree and go now, you still can someday. Even when you're 60.

Blessings to you,
Donna