Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Renewal

Spring is coming to Baltimore, it feels that suddenly the grass is green and the tulips and daffodils and crocuses are everywhere. And our move to Ecuador is ever closer. I am getting accustomed to informing my patients and colleagues and friends and neighbours and everyone I meet that I am leaving and each time I tell someone, it feels more real and more imminent.

I am still wading through papers and clothes and more junk than I ever imagined I could accumulate in a short seven years. It feels as if I am leaving my life behind forever, I will NEVER come back to this life, so I have to say goodbye every day.

I am amazed that I am still eager to go. I wonder if this is a convenient time to have a midlife crisis. I am leaving my life, a life I wanted to leave, a life I needed to leave. This is my chance to start anew, not just inside but in every way imaginable. If I was not going to Ecuador, I would simply be repeating the same life, and a year from now, nothing much would be different. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with the life I lead. Interestingly, I look back and reflect that I have made huge changes in my life over and over through the years, so perhaps this is not such a stretch after all. I left Salt Lake City to follow Eric to Baltimore. I closed my practice, said goodbye to a life that I loved and struggled adjusting to a new city, a new job, a new husband. Prior to Salt Lake, I lived in Newport Beach, California, a place that I was entranced with every morning that I woke up to look over the water and marvel. I left a couple of years after my divorce and the end of my life as I knew it then. And I left Edmonton after my residency to do a fellowship in San Diego and to marry and have my first child. And I left Montreal and Rome and Ottawa and Vancouver, all wonderful places to live and difficult to leave. Moving to Ecuador is part of this pattern of my life, of leaving and starting over. I am trying to lucky to have this chance to renew, revitalize, restart....

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