The Motivation Behind My Embarrassing Secret (Santa Barbara)

I am a grown woman, thirty- (covers my mouth with my hand to muffle the rest of my age).

I travel a lot for work, and lately when I am not traveling, and honestly, even when I am, I have been staying with my parents.

Thirty-something, professional, living “at home.”

The spirit of this came to a head this weekend with a lot of animosity between my parents and me.

Basically, why am I “mooching” off my parents… forget about how undignified and how embarrassed I am by living with my parents. (Not to mention the fact that I have to run to a storage unit to grab stuff at least once a week because most of my stuff is there so as not to invade their space.)

I make a good living. Why am I living at home?

One word: Cancer.

It is not that I have cancer.

It is not that my last bout with cancer left me in debt.

It is that the next time I have cancer, which is not a statically negligible likelihood, I estimate I will need to have $70,000 in the bank to be comfortable for treatment.

That $70,000 is the cost of treatment, the cost living and the cost of comfort (nice scarfs for my bald head) for approximately one year.

I have always been a penny-pincher. But this has been monumentally exacerbated by having had cancer.  I had frugally saved for years, and it afforded me the luxury of living, without worry, off savings for 2011’s chemotherapy and 2012’s multiple surgeries.  It was a luxury and a comfort, but it did empty my coffers. So now, I am saving up to have cancer, again, because if there is one thing healthy me, can do for sick me, it is afford myself the comfort of not having to work while sick or even worry while being sick.

And you know what, if in five years, I don’t need to use it, well gosh it will be an awesome fund for an extended South Pacific vacation.

In the meantime, as I weigh the merits of every nickel I choose to spend, I hide this reality, both the motivation and the day-to-day choices, from friends and family alike. I know my family would say “we will take care of you” and my friends would say “you can’t constantly be planning on having cancer.”

All cancer patients make some dramatic change in their lives in an attempt for control. Usually this manifests in eating choices, next most common is an exercise lifestyle, a little less frequently it manifests in work changes, rarely but sometimes in relationship choices, often ending relationships.

I admit I am doing it a little differently. I am not trying to prevent cancer by living only on blueberries and pomegranates. I am just trying to prepare to be comfortable if it should happen again…. A very boy-scout approach if I do say so myself (but I do understand those who see it as twisted if not outright perverse).

Please don’t judge me for my choices, as post-traumatic stress induced as they are.

Just allow me to cope the way I need to.

Stupid: Cancer.

Cool: Being healthy enough to be making headway in my rainy-day (aka cancer) fund.

Addicted (LAX/Houston)

(Written at United Club at LAX,  intended to be posted from Houston… but I forgot cause I was enjoying the airport)

Recently, I spent 18 consecutive days in one city.

Sounds unremarkable, but for me it was exceptional. It was the first time in over a year I had spent more than ten consecutive days in a single city.

I am a traveler.

And I am addicted to this life.

Very little makes me happier sitting, with an hour to spare, at the airport, waiting for a journey to begin.

As I drove into LAX this morning, happy as could be, if not euphoric, about the day ahead, with two airplanes, three airports and three time zones, I tried to figure out the appeal because it’s obviously the airplane food.

Part of it is the complete forced disconnect, no phone, no email, no way of getting in touch, which I regret will be going away with the prevalence of wifi on planes. I know arguably one could do this at any time, by just turning off the phone, but the difference is, when flying, it is entirely socially and corporately acceptable. It is the “get out of jail free” card for the business world, explaining away why you did not reply to that email promptly and within four hours.  (And by the way, did you notice that the world did in fact continue to turn without my instant reply?)

But for me I think the travel appeal, actually, just the airport appeal, it is far deeper than that. When I was young, my mother and father, divorced more than a decade, lived about a hundred miles apart. I would take a bus between the two. At some point way back then, at all of perhaps 13, I pondered, “Where am I really me?” 

It is an exceptionally deep question for a child (and truth be known one I continue to ask). I was aware that my mother’s house, my mother’s rules, my mother’s way crafted my thoughts, actions, and feelings while I was there. Approaching my father’s, a metamorphosis would occur and my thoughts, actions and feelings would morph to the requirements of my new location, my new company and their expectations.

As a child, I wondered, if I was really me in either location.

And, as a young teen, I decided, in the two hours between locations, I was perhaps only really myself, during precisely those two hours, outside of the crafting contextual hands of either location.

Now, happy as a clam, sitting at LAX, I can’t help but wonder if that very same notion is what appeals to me about travel. Travelling frees me. Not free as in, I can go anywhere, but free as in released from expectations. This is liberating not just because it means I don’t have to answer my emails, but because it also means I don’t have to think any particular way.

Follow me for a moment down a tangent. When I proof read, I often change the font of what I am working on so that I literally see what was written differently. It sounds ridiculous, but try it and you will be sold. It is amazing how much the font can change what you “see” in the same written words.

I feel traveling provides the exact same adjustment. It is not that I feel confined when I am in any one place. It is more that I find the slip into heuristic action, lulling, and dulling the thought behind actions.

Traveling activates my mind, like running and finding the high. In the new context, freed from the ephemeral location specific forces sculpting choices, default decisions made without thought day-to-day are suddenly questioned,  “but do I really like eggs for breakfast, given all the choices here…” and some decisions are dramatically simplified, after all, I only brought one pair of shoes.

There are the curiosities; the person over there, with the strange hat and accent, what brought them here? What did they see? How has it changed them?

It is the empty slate factor. Sure, I have this ticket for Houston, but I am here. I could fly to ….

Which leads to, where would I want to fly to?

Which leads to dreams, and hopes and aspirations.

I know for a lot of people, the fact that spending an obligatory hour waiting at the airport gives me time in which I am spurred to think differently and that this is something l get high on, seems crazy.

I guess I can’t explain it and really, what addict can really explain their appetite or experience within their addiction.

But, here, at the airport, in between places, at the beginning of a journey, with a child’s volume of hope and excitement for the days ahead, here is where I feel most at home, most free and most alive.

Cool: The pleasure of my addiction

Stupid: Like all addictions, the distance it pushes between my friends and family.