.roaches

So I have had an abrupt change of heart about leaving - and it all started with a cockroach.

Or rather, 2 cockroaches -the biggest most horrendous walking-fig-look-alike-with-horrid-spin- tentacle cockroaches - ghastly legs and other dreadful appendages included, they were each about the size of a guinea hen egg.

I don't think I can adequately describe how much I abhor cockroaches. 

There are no words to express my fear and revulsion.

When I got here, I listed "to kill a cockroach" as an item on my Tchadian bucket list.

And, well, I see now that that is simply unrealistic and have no problem leaving that misguided wish blissfully unfulfilled.

So, i had grabbed my bag of shower stuff and was headed out the door and to the shower - and it all happened so fast - but in between screams i saw one fall from my hand that was holding my bag onto the floor - and then of course I threw everything i was carrying and a second evil one crawled out from under my towel.

I turned and ran as fast as I could into the night and then from the shadows frantically called the pharmacist to come and kill them.

He proceeded to laugh hysterically, call me a child, which I heartily agreed to being in that moment, and grab the wretched insect by one of its graspy moving legs and started walking towards me, refusing to kill it no matter how emphatically i insisted that death was the only acceptable fate. 

I am still shuddering all over just thinking about it. 

Still.

Shuddering.

So then i gather up the courage to actually touch my shower stuff again (this took a jumpy and tentative serious of maneuvers in which the pharmacist was required to heavily assist me) and headed for the shower. 

I was just ready to get in the shower when i see.... a frog

and then i look up and see.....a bat

And that was it.

The switch was flipped.

and I decided I was ready to go.

When I related this story to Bronwyn, who, incidentally, found a COW in her house yesterday, she decided the the God of the little things had sent the cockroaches to help me start on the path of being okay about leaving. 

While I don't necessarily subscribe to this theory ( if God cares about the little things, maybe he could save a few kids while he's tucking cockroaches in next to my conditioner), it is true that since the cockroach incident I have stopped moping around and decided that I want to leave. 

And then yesterday I received 2 lovely emails from my brother Daniel and my friend David who are both free spirits that are on the road right now - and it reminded me about wanderlust, and how I am a gypsy at heart, and I felt the tug of the open road calling me, and I started feeling excited about my next dive into the unknown. 

because of course I can't stay.  I am not yet at the point where I can do that - I have too many dreams that have yet to be freed - and even though it is bitter to leave I have to embrace the intoxicating sweet of being a tumbleweed. 

If I had never left TN I would not have fallen in love with this place and people - and it is because of this that I must leave again - because there is a vast expanse of rich experience and relationships awaiting me if I can only find the courage to open my heart and take risks - and one day I will be able to look back and say....If I had never left Tchad I would not have.........

I cannot complain because this is the life I have chosen - this is the life that calls to me. 

Maybe some day I will stop dancing with the wind, but that time has not yet come, today is not that day, so instead I'll follow the invisible forces that are tugging at my soul - persistently turning my face to new sunrises and northbound blacktop, calm only when my feet begin to wander.

So I'm headed across country to the last frontier - to a tiny town at the end of a road, a dot on the shores of a bay.   

I hope there aren't any cockroaches in Alaska.