I've got to be up in about three hours to meet up with my new colleagues at my new job but seeing as how I took that stupid red eye fight from LA to ATL again Sunday night, I slept most the day yesterday. Therefore, I'm now wide awake. I have the hardest time getting back on my time zone when I come home. I wish I were still in LA but I had to come home. Today starts all the stuff I have to do before I start my new job. So much to do but I'm not worrying about it. No matter what, the day comes and somehow you end up ready to go.
I'll write about all the amazing things we did in Hawaii later....it is just too much. Share some pictures too probably.
But this is really about coming home. I didn't sleep much on the flight and then we landed right when I had gotten good asleep. I was so out of it in the airport that I didn't even recognize my own bag on the conveyor belt. In my defense, it was turned over and I couldn't see the white and green front.....just the black back.
I'll never walk through the ATL airport without thinking about the last time my dad came to pick me up after I'd been gone somewhere. He was sitting down near the baggage carousel and I looked at him and knew something was wrong. He got up and I got the hug I always got from him.
Even though I know he'll never be waiting for me in that baggage claim area again, I still look for him. It has gotten to the point where I don't even ask anyone to pick me up anymore. I get home on my own just like I get there on my own. I've become the Uber queen. If it can't be my Daddy coming to get me, then I can't say I want it to be anyone else. He wasn't a perfect person by any means but he was always there.
So, the Uber queen gets along very well with her drivers to and from the airport no matter what city or country she's taking Uber in. It is a weird thing. However, this time I met the best one ever who took me to the airport in LA. We had an hour to drive because of traffic and all that construction at LAX. I looked at him when he got out of the car at my friend's house to get my luggage and I wasn't so sure. Never had anyone pick me up in a Mercedes Benz yet be wearing ripped jeans, a Ramones shirt, and have some nice tattoos. But we hit it off from the beginning. So much so that I'm going to see him in November when I'm back there for the Cancer Fundraiser I participate in that's in LA. We got to the airport and stayed in the car talking for awhile. He knows things about me I don't tell anyone sometimes and certainly not right away. He was into what I had to say that has everything to do about the person I am. He got it and he is so much like me. He's taking me to the one place there I've wanted to go the most. Weird thing was he'd taken someone there on an Uber trip a few days before....well they lived in the only other house on that road. He'd pulled the car over on the side of the road and went and stood at the beginning of what used to be a driveway to a house that doesn't exist anymore. The place I want to go so bad. He'd felt it as much as he could....what exists there still but I need to go. He knows I need to go and looks forward to what it will be like when I do. I've done my research on everything about that house and it was interesting telling him what I know.
So, I come home to my cat. Love of my life always. I come home to my little circle of friends because I didn't want the big circle anymore. I get to see one of them in about three hours and meet a lot of my new colleagues as we take advantage of one of the perks of what we do together. I look forward to adding some more true people to my group. Tomorrow starts the pre-work stuff to get me ready to start my new job. I have five days of independence after that to finish things I need to, get the new things done I want to, and get ready for my new job. Then it starts.
One of my old friends who left ATL for Florida said something last week that really kind of made me think. So many people don't really look at the realness of others or try to look past the pretty facade so many put up. They don't see or try to see what's inside and therefore they miss out on what could be the best thing and the most real lasting thing they could ever know. But they latch on to the first thing that comes along. Then you give it a few years and they're at the real low in their life when they realize what they did. He was whining about it and I ALMOST sent him a message letting him know in a nice way that he made his choice....anyone could see it wan't a good one and he left so many other better choices he could have made off to the side. But through all that he has been through, he still thinks that one person is going to save him. No one person is ever going to save you. That's the problem when you really believe that. But he has something that should be his everything and it isn't sadly....family.
So, one day maybe I'll get off that plane and be in baggage claim looking for someone who came to pick me up and it will be someone like the stranger I met in LA who is now a friend who will see past that facade that's up because frankly, who cares about giving anyone the time of day anymore when it isn't going to mean anything? Too bad so many others were too busy looking for something or someone easy that wouldn't last to really see what they had or could have had. Really, it is too bad about the ones that acted certain ways insuring I definitely did not want them around anymore. You gave up a lot. You gave up on someone who only wants stability in a life of instability. You gave up someone who would always be there no matter what as long at it was a mutual thing. That's all I ask. Stability and loyalty and dependability. No lies and no looking for what YOU think is the next best thing. So, don't tell me you love me and you always will and YOU are there waiting for me when you are the one who walked away, changed your mind, but never knew me well enough to know what to do or say to get me back. It starts with responsibility for the things you did and said. Easy.....you acknowledge it and we're on our way back to a better place.
I'd be more than happy to say I'm sorry to some that I let the anger, hatred, and sadness take over and I took it out on you. But I seem to be the only one. I don't know what people think but I do know you will one day go through what I did....not exactly but close to it.
The ones I come home to, the one I took with me to Hawaii, the ones I have in Hawaii, and the ones I call family in LA that I spent a few days with are the ones who will benefit from not giving up, not thinking anyone else was better, seeing the real me. They aren't the only ones. There's the other group in Australia who is like my family too. There is Jaimie who is the sister I was supposed to have in Texas.
I hold on to what my friends in LA said to me a few times after I shared a very traumatic event I'd been through when I was 25 with them during this trip. An event everyone said I shouldn't have even lived through. So my friends said......you wouldn't have survived that....you couldn't have unless God had a purpose for your life and it was a big one too. Maybe one day I'll know what that purpose is because right now, I don't think I do.
When I left for LA I was still struggling to make sense of things enough to get back what I had once or even to have a new beginning or most likely a combo of the two. But I do have a new beginning and it starts in a few hours with new people, a new situation, and thank God I'm out of the old one.
This summer was a hard one but I wouldn't trade the experiences, the way things worked out, the people I have, or this chance at this new beginning that could get me the best of myself back....for what I've already left in the past.
This wasn't where I thought I'd be at all or what I thought I'd be doing but something tells me I'm right where I'm supposed to be doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.
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