I open my eyes to the first glint of sun and can't recollect what day of the week it is ... for a good 5 minutes, on a daily basis. Complete blank. I lay there. The days are running together.
Ana Rebeca is my friend. She is an artist. A self-described artist by passion, teacher by profession. Mature for her age, and determined to break the “typical Dominican” mold, she marches to the beat of her own drum. Though she is Santo Domingo-born (and raised), something in Ana Rebeca screams of worldly, of a culture beyond the hustle and bustle of the city, and the culture of merengue, platano, and the family-oriented, strong-willed and always lively Dominican.
It’s hot. And everyone’s complaining about it. Funny, for people who have lived here all their lives, Dominicans don’t seem to tolerate the typical dry heat well. I don’t frequently notice the heat for some reason. Probably because I’m just passing by, as I have been for 10 years now. I can feel the sweat on my neck and the dampness of my pillow. Downstairs breakfast is underway and someone has come to visit. Everything seems to gradually kick in.
It’s been approximately 1 year, 7 months, and 8 days since I last took a gulp of that strange spirit called travel. You may not have noticed the change, but I did. And I think I’ve earned at least my first chip.
To be fair, I have traveled to Dominican Republic multiple times since 2010, but that’s my birthplace … so I don’t count it. And I did go to Costa Rica on a missions trip, but I don’t count that because that trip wasn’t about travel, or the people or exploring culture, but instead about service.
My favorite spot in the world is a stretch of tile flooring in an airport in the Caribbean. I’m not sure I know how to explain the why, but I want to try.
When I draw the curtains on our first day, it’s to a few cars waiting on the light in front of our hotel. Beyond is Buckingham Fountain and beyond that sprinting marathon runners. Beyond that Lake Michigan. And beyond that…well, a flat, azure nothingness. It’s the most expansive lake I’ve ever seen. The maps are wrong. The great city of Chicago’s cloud-scrapers rest their mighty shadows on the shores of an ocean.
Lately I’ve found myself bowing to one emotion able to discourage me from travel planning, travel dreaming, travel doing… and on that note, from bigger, more enriching things in this life. It’s spelled F-E-A-R.
Life is a balancing act. It’s no grand revelation. But the phrase has paraded the streets of my mind for the last couple of weeks, and this is me calling in the parade director to halt its march and get it kicked off the line once and for all.
This is the B-side… the so-called conquered travel addiction in remission.
Travel tugs at two conflicting parts of me. The sensible, responsible individual that fears the growing rate at which her debt grows – a remarkable amount for a 24-year-old girl (woman?) sans student loans or loans of any kind for that matter – and the person that gets that itching, can’t-take-the-monotony of the everyday, 24-year-old with no perceivable strings to hold her down. It’s the latter of course that always feels the urge to give in.
I open my eyes to the first glint of sun and can't recollect what day of the week it is ... for a good 5 minutes, on a daily basis. Complete blank. I lay there. The days are running together.