So here I am, after four months without blogging and almost three months out of the country... And why am I choosing to break my cyber-silence now? Because I am sat at a friend's place and they are watching Lost, which I don't really care for, and they have a laptop I can use...
I'm currently in San Francisco, rapidly nearing the end of my World Trip, which has been - save a couple of minor reservations more symptomatic of the fact that I naturally find fault with pretty much everything (and, sooner or later, everyone) than due to any real shortcomings or disappointments - absolutely fantastic: to borrow a cliché I used in an e-mail earlier on today, it has been just what the doctor ordered.
I meant to write before I left (back in November), but work agreed to keep me on until a week before I left the country, I had been living on friends' floors (well, inflatable matresses mostly) since the end of September, and pretty much all of my scarce free time was devoted to either going to the gym or making plans for my then-impending trip. Excuses excuses...
I in fact became a gymoholic before I left to come on this trip - not unhealthily so, but in a very disciplined manner. I may well pick up where I left off as soon as I can too - for the first time in my life, I actually felt like my body was looking good (as opposed to generally skinny and shapeless, save a little belly which really didn't suit my frame). It's going to be difficult to pick it up again, but I fully intend to...
Several things have become clear on this trip - it's amazing what a lot of time just sat around on a beach doing nothing but following your thought patterns uninterrupted through to their (il?)logical ends can do. The home truths then (excuse the irony):
- I really do love my father. In order to re-embrace this notion after the guilt-ridden, numb feeling I have had for the last few years, the finer details of which I am not going to discuss here, I had to allow not only the negative memories of my childhood and early adulthood to surface - those which contain some of the most despicable behaviour on my father's part; those which consume me in anger, confusion and regret; those which have continually and persistently plagued me for as long as I can remember - but also the positive memories, which I now realise are a more authentic representation of my father's true personality and his undeniable love for me and my sister, and to a lesser extent my mother, to whom I still feel he has at times behaved unforgivabley. I love him, and while I feel I may well act differently (i.e. more aggressively) in future should I sense he is acting up again, I am edging, slowly but with increasing speed, towards a feeling of resolution regarding what has happened in the past. How my mother continues to cope with our dysfunctional family is both beyond my comprehension and extremely humbling, but perhaps during this holiday I have shared a glimmer of her understanding of my father's illness.
- I am, one way or another, addicted to tanning. For everyone other than CM - with whom I have only touched upon this briefly but I'm pretty sure he is aware, as are some of my other friends although they might not understand why - this is almost exclusively what I was referring to a while ago when I talked about me needing this in order to feel good. If I wanted to give some kind of explanation, I would look to my teenage years when I was naturally very pale and very skinny, and my contemporaries were quite callous and hurtful with their remarks: this stuck and, at times quite embarrassingly due to the social stigmas attached, since the age of nineteen I have been using solariums on and off. This really ought to stop - it did for the longest period around four years ago when I was with the last girl for whom I actually felt something - but I'm still so aware of the difference in the way I feel about myself when I do and don't tan that stopping currently seems to carry too high a price.
- I need to push on with my career: in short, at the very least, I need an additional skill set and corresponding qualification.
On the job front, I really do have reason to celebrate as my old company (the one I quit in order to come travelling) has been in touch, offering me a total of three roles, one of which I accepted before negotiating a 35% wage increase (for those of you who know me, I would appreciate you treating this information as strictly confidential). Once again I am having money literally thrown at me, the only downside of which is that I may well have to work my arse off in order to show these guys that I am both undeniably worth the money, and indispensible (for when the initial three month contract is up). For now, this is a disadvantage I'm more than willing to put up with.
Finally, I have every intention of documenting my trip on this blog by appeal to the relevant parts of the e-mails I have sent to my friends and family over the last three months or so. The only current problem I have is that I saved two months worth of e-mails on a memory stick from which I am having real difficulty in wiping a variant of the Brontok virus (without re-formatting the drive and losing the data). I'm hoping to get this sorted once I get home so I'll post as soon as I get my shit together. In the meantime, ta ta...
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