Restless

I'd like to start first by saying today is Coach's birthday. It was very difficult for me to not tell him happy birthday. But I didn't, as BFF has me under a strict "no communication for any reason" order, and for good reason; when I talk to Coach he is sweet and charming and wonderful and I forget all the reasons why us being apart is good. Having some foresight at least, the day immediately following our break-up I returned his birthday gift (a hardcover copy of Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN - he would have loved it) and that was my very first baby-step toward getting over this mess.

Whenever I am stressed (and believe me, this break-up is BIG TIME STRESS, as you can see), I imagine all kinds of wonderful, exotic places I can visit. I scour tourism sites and make lists of all the historical sites I want to see. And when that bores me, I look at the hundreds of pictures I took in the places I've already been to and fallen in love with. I get restless with the stress, want to get out of town, away from all the reminders of Coach (the Vegas story with BFF is a prime example of this but, as always, it is for another time.) I don't want this confused with running away, I don't want to be gone forever, but I want to see something new, something not many get to.

I love history, I am addicted to learning all I can specifically about England, Ireland, and Scotland. Luckily, I have had the opportunity to go to all three places, and a few more - namely Vegas, Seattle, Amsterdam and island-hopping around Hawaii. I have been very lucky so far as to have seen the things I have: to have climbed the winding staircases in the remains of Blarney Castle, kissing the stone when I reached the top; I have stood in the very kitchen where Anne Frank and her sister Margot washed dishes as they and their family hid from the Nazis, stood in her bedroom, staring at the wall where she pasted pictures, seen her journal for myself and imagined what it would have been like to live in this cramped space with so many people but still feel so alone; I've stood at the top of Mauna Loa and watched it erupt; I've been swimming with sharks off the North Shore; stood on the memorial of the U.S.S. Arizona, seen all the places I'd only read about in history books about that fateful day in December; I have been on a cruise of Loch Ness, half-heartedly searching for Nessie while enjoying the beautiful landscape; I've stood in the courtyard of Kilmainham Gaol, where many of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were executed; I've stood at the gate of Stirling Castle and looked across the expanse before me to see where William Wallace's men were camped before the battle; I've seen the amazing High Crosses of Ireland, and the last place Titanic docked in Ireland - in Cobh; I've seen the mysteries that are Stonehenge and Newgrange; walked through the Red Light District; the list goes on.

I don't mean to sound braggy, that is not my intention. But I have gone out into the world and lived. I want to keep doing that. But when Coach broke up with me a few weeks ago, I could not remember who that woman was who wanted to see the world. All I wanted to do was sit and wallow and cry. Don't get me wrong, I did plenty of it that, as my friends can attest to. And while it's less now, sometimes I still do those things. But I know it is a good sign that I am getting restless, that I want to go to these places, or discover new ones. How amazing would it be to see the Terra Cotta Warriors, to walk along the Great Wall of China, to see the remains of the Berlin Wall, Auschwitz, King Tut's Tomb and the pyramids, see the ruins of Masada, see how Pompeii is forever locked into that one moment when life as they knew ended without warning. This list too, goes on and on. In fact, all these things are on my bucket list - and incidentally Coach and I created his bucket list together one night, I added things to mine, we talked and laughed til late about the things on our lists that we would do together. But the point is, I am restless and that is good. It means I am on my way. There will be set-backs, I will relapse and cry and question everything, but I will never be at that point again, where I was the day, the week we broke up. For that I (and I'm sure all my friends), are very thankful.