The freedom milestone seems bigger and nearer as time passed. People come and speak to me about my impending departure, out of curiosity rather than concern. And as they asked about the possibility of transfer rather than departure, i share with them information and decision points to varying degrees. Yet I haven't bothered to explain all the facets of my career decision, for it was of no point. No one was in my shoes experiencing all that I do, no one else in the world. I had the sole right to decide what to do with those experience, emotions, feelings and thought processes that belong to me alone, in career as in life.
A friend and a well meaning stranger commented that my lost love was only 8 months long, as if time was an accurate measure of how invested the heart could be. They have no idea, how intense love could be, an intensity that has nothing to do with the passage of time at all. That there was a kind of love that seared its indelible mark on your life, that you could never and would never want to forget it all. Perhaps I would feel less as time passed from this point on, but time can never wash away the memory of passion. I have loved with all my heart and no one can tell me it was nothing because it wasn't decades old.
And this realization that no one else can truly understand, that only I can make my own decisions (and live with the consequences alone) over the past year has caused me to be lost and wandering in the wilderness of my mind. For having no one else that I can trust to give the ULTIMATE "right" advice, I was left to my own devices. Perhaps that was what pre-adulthood was all about; preparing your foundation for future decision-making. That our personality, motivations, notions of what is good./bad/right/wrong had been continually shaped, up till the mould that represented us solidified into adulthood. The more grounded you become as you grow, the more solid that adulthood mould becomes. The more open and fluid you are as a pre-adult, the longer you take to reach the stage where you can be sure of all your decisions because your mould for decision making has not taken form and too much whim and fancy cloud your perception of current situations and future scenarios.
And so my plight. I feel truly that I am an adult now. A lost, wandering, not so well formed adult. The price of my whim and fancies, openness and thirst for new experiences in life. Yet it was me, and it might be me for the rest of my life. I can only hope that the consequences I am living with, gives me the confidence to make firm decisions in the future. I find it difficult to ascertain if leaving is a pull or push factor. I'm pulled and pushed in all directions simultaneously. And I've long abandoned the whimiscal "pray and ask God where" approach ever since the supersitions of a well meaning friend had overwhelmed me and stomped all over my feelings. I can only go ahead in the direction I am headed, till the next roadblock or crossroads, while learning, albeit too late, how to read the map and navigate through life, using a whirling compass as my guide.