A Great Big Ugly Fork in my Road

I'll admit it. For the past 6 months I have been depressed beyond belief. Most people close to me are already well aware, since my good days are met with extreme enthusiasm and my bad days are met with offers to go for coffee for the 17th time that day (pretty well the only social activity I seem to enjoy lately).

I made this absolutely HUGE decision back in January for all of the wrong reasons and not once in making that decision did I stop and think "Are you being realistic?".

I wasn't.

I had this idea that in sticking around, everything would pan out just as it should, and that I'd eventually grow accustomed to life in my hometown and everything it entailed. I'd develop a stronger relationship with my family, better bonds with my friends here, take my degree without distraction and try life in town as opposed to a 40 minute drive outside. Plus I met my apartment and fell in love.

But now, 6 months later I've realized how not myself I've been feeling. How lonely I am almost all the time. How much I miss the people and experiences I've had away from here. How hot a South facing apartment gets in the heat of the summer.

I'm tired of feeling reliant and of not being able to do or experience the things I love because of distance or time constraints.

Granted, I have an awesome job with fantastic coworkers and I get paid well to do what I do, but it's not perfect and ultimately I need to have an awesome personal life, too, in order to feel happy.

This town is not where I will find the man/the job/the home of my dreams, and I've always known that, but have remained eternally optimistic that the tide would turn and somehow one of those things would appear here. I think I let my optimism get in the way of my more realistic side.

So here I stand -- not at a crossroads -- but at a fork going in 3 different directions.

One loops back here, and I know that's the road I can only take in the direst of circumstances. The other 2 lead off into directions both familiar and unfamiliar. I'm leaning towards walking down the one path without a second thought, but something about the other seems to beckon and isn't altogether discounted. It's a difficult decision, and I've been standing here for almost the entirety of this past half-year debating.

I know many people in my life believe I've made the decision to go down the one path due to a man, and while a man -- and the distance between us -- plays a minor role, rest assured he was not the catalyst for the decision. He came along months after the thought first crossed my mind and besides I've learned my lesson about staying or going based on the whims of someone special in your life, and have made the decision that where I choose to go should be dependent on how happy I believe I will be there.

Yes, there's a man of interest. And it's no surprise that trying to get to (re)know one another over a distance of 500+ kms is no small task.

It doesn't alleviate the situation when things like touchy satellite internet and no cellphone reception hinder your ability to communicate with each other effectively through the long distance.

Anyway, back to the point...

Although there is a person of interest, he's still just that and not the love of my life or rather even someone I am in love with. He just has the capacity to make my new life elsewhere more enjoyable than the one I have here, and things like fun are weighing heavily in my decision based on the trace quantities available here.

I wish I knew what the future held and which one of the two decisions I'm debating was the road to success. I'd hate to discover that a year from now, I'm just making the same mistake over again, instead of trying something a different way in hopes of obtaining a different result.

On another note, I will be abandoning this blog shortly in favour of starting another less public blog (see "Fishbowl" if you're confused). Those wonderful readers who have been with me over the past 5 years here are welcome to contact me privately for the new address.

PS. I dropped all meat from my diet about a week ago now. There's been a gradual lead up where I was cutting out most meat, but the transition is pretty well complete now after one quickie McD's binge. My roommate is going to hate me when he comes home and sees all the tofu and fake meat in the freezer.