Doha Diaries 3: Departure Date

Tuesday July 10, 2007

I got my ticket confirmation today. I'll be leaving for Doha on Monday. My departure was supposed to be early April and kept getting pushed back...so you'd think I'd be ready by now. I'm not. There is a torrent of emotions going through me and I can't pin each one down. There's so much anxiety, fear and guilt battling with curiosity and excitement. I don't know which one I should allow myself to feel.

My parents are barely settled in and I feel I should be here for them. I'm middle-eastern, so the "it's my life and I should go ahead and live it" doesn't apply. I'm worried how it's going to be for them, but then again, I wonder what difference it would really make if I were here for another week or two. And then I think of my mom, and how she would appreciate my being there for things like painting and picking out colors and materials. She doesn't lay the guilt on at all, but the silence of her saying it hurts even more.

Then there's my fiancé. The guilt of forcing separation on him, as much as he was aware of my goals and dreams when we met, to make this a reality may be too much. To me, being engaged isn't a "trial period", I've been as good as married since he proposed. (For those married folks, I know things change when you're married for real, what I mean is that I have no doubts that he's the one). I wonder where "absence makes the heart grow fonder" comes from. I wonder if I should have waited until we were actually married on paper to move away like this. I hate thinking "time will tell". Time never tells. Time only reveals peoples behavior, it reveals choices and the consequences they bring. For now, all I can chose to believe is what I know for sure....and that is that my love for him his true and unwavering. My intentions are to build myself into the best, strongest woman I can be and so to be the best, strongest partner my partner may ever need.

And then there's the job itself...there's SSSOOO many "what ifs" where that is concerned. The consequences of loving/hating it. The adjusting to the way of life out there. The meeting new people and making new friends. I don't even have an emergency contact!! Who is gonna be able to rescue me in case I get a major disease??? Ok...thinking about it will just cause more frenzy. I learned long ago that I can analyze and prepare all I want, it still doesn't mean I'll know how to deal with it when I get there. And you can live without an emergency contact, right?

I have a little over five days left in Montreal. I'll try to make the best of each and will attempt not to tinge them with the concerns I've been having the past few hours.