Anxiety

I get a crazy amount of anxiety when I'm left to myself and offered any kind of intellectual stimulation. It's a funny thing, really - it doesn't have to be an article about the city, or a discussion of mobility, or anything that should spark this feeling in me. But tonight, laying on the couch with a book open and the TV on, I feel this wave of anxiety settle over me.

I use the word "settle" deliberately - I feel like anxiety for me is a kind of blanket. It's near me, and then I choose to wrap myself up in it to feel all the melancholy feelings. It feels good some nights, especially the nights I need to remember there's more out there for us. Lately there have been an excess of those kind of nights - as great as my job is, there's this part of me just awash in longing for something that I can't completely verbalize.

I want to go experience the city again. I think about the idea of packing things up and moving, and this time not so temporarily, and I feel the pit in my stomach growing both with need and with nervousness. I want so badly to get away from all of the things that I see every day - have been seeing every day for years - but the idea of leaving, really and truly, is nervewracking. It's the city in my rearview mirror, when it shouldn't be in the rearview at all.

I guess what I'm getting at is that some days, I'm SO READY to move to the next phase of our lives. I'm ready to breathe my own air in a city that I don't have to share with everyone I know. I can't wait to hear street sounds and foreign voices, and it only took me three years to realize how much I loved those things. I'm ready to be the kind of grown up that gets to think about marriage and kids and tenure track jobs and careers, but I'm also terrified of all of those things.

I miss that sense of adventure and longing and exploration with Brian. He is my perfect exploring companion, and the responsibility I have right now is stifling that special part of our relationship that I think very few people have. I guess I have the wanderlust back.