My girl dropped a potential bomb on me yesterday... she came back over after running some errands, and the first thing she said to me was "hey, do you want to move to Europe with me for like a year?" I was like "...whoa". We talked about it a bit and I listed some surface reasons why it would be difficult, but in truth I just don't want to. I like the idea of that sometime in my life, but not now. Right now I've got a lot going on for me where I am... working hard on music with people I want to play music with (and we're starting to line up gigs finally though our first is still a week away). I own my house and I'd have to deal with renting it and paying someone to manage that... I have great friends I don't want to leave, my cats might end up quarantined for a long time (I have heard horror stories), I'd have to quit my job which is an amazing job, and my dad is sick and rapidly deteriorating and I can't not see him for a year (in a year there is a strong possibility he won't be able to talk anymore or really move at all... he could have not much more than a year also, and there is no way I'm going to completely miss the last year(s) of his life, I already feel bad for living 700 miles away but at least it's not hard to visit and I do visit).
I'm hoping it was a momentary feeling and she won't keep wanting to do it, because I really don't want to not be with her, she's awesome. But neither of us wants a long-distance relationship I don't think. The thing is, she's lived in Europe before (when she was 16-17, on her own too, or with a host family actually), and she likes to move around sometimes. I think she gets down after a while being in a place because she doesn't know what she wants to do with her life so she gets bored and living somewhere else provides some excitement.
It's gonna be really sad if she ends up going to do that... I really just can't, nor do I want to right now. I'd probably do it someday... maybe. I like the idea of it in theory and when I was depressed, I had an intense wanderlust, I really felt pain at the fact that I couldn't go live around the world. But really I wanted to run away and just start something somewhere else. And I'm sure it would be an amazing experience (plus a year isn't really THAT long), but I'm having an amazing experience here and I feel like it's just getting started, or just picking up steam anyway. It seems nonsensical to me to leave that. I mean even if it's just a year, that's a YEAR of everything here continuing and changing without me... and that doesn't feel right to me. I've come to realize she is somewhat depressed, and that the root of it is that she just doesn't really feel like she totally has a place, doesn't know what she wants to devote her life to. But she likes new experiences and new people and exploring. And I do too, but even more than that I like to form families of people, and get really involved with things, and have familiar places around me that I love. It's really ideal for me here, I haven't even considered moving anytime in the foreseeable future, because I'm really happy here. So, like, why move and hope that I could have something as good somewhere else?
I'm not sure what to think.
We have this awesome thing and it keeps getting better and closer. And that would continue in Europe but I don't know if it would work if she just sometimes leaves for a year. I dunno, maybe it would but that would suck. I'll be really sad if it doesn't work out though. Much sadder than when my 12 year relationship ended because I have nothing but love and affection for her, without any kind of resentment or pain at all. But at least I'm in a place in my life where I am going to make the right decision for me about stuff like that. It would be heartbreaking but I would get past it and be fine. But I don't want that to happen.
Just had to write out some thoughts on that. If she brings it up again, I'll talk to her about it and lay out exactly how I feel. At this point she just mentioned it once and didn't push me to talk much about it, but clearly it's something she wants, otherwise she wouldn't have said it.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
