Back to the books

I've been back home in the UK for a couple of days now. I'm so jet-lagged, I could vomit. The weather was kind enough to be that glorious March sunshine that makes the rolling clouds look wonderful when I landed, but now it's gone back to the dreary grey.

My month in Washington went far too quickly for me to understand. We lost several days, snowed in, and a good deal more time travelling up and down the state. I spent a small fortune.

I spoiled Cowboy on Valentine's Day, buying him a leather splitter and a pattern for him to make his own spur straps. I know, I can hear you thinking it. He's the luckiest man alive, with romantic gestures like that. His gift to me was driving me to Seattle more times than he'd care to mention, and with only minimal complaining.

Who says romance is dead?

Now that I'm home, it's time to get on with boring tasks like doing the company accounts, realising I need to stop spending so much money on Cowboy, and hoping like heck that I can get the right paperwork together for the school in Seattle to accept me into their programme as of May. I don't particularly want to have to wait until September.



Although Cowboy said it was a good thing I was leaving for a bit, as Sunshine was getting kind of smart-arse about things and he needs some time to put her back to work. I didn't think we looked too bad.

"The Road Not Taken"

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Robert Frost had it about right. For over a week, now, I have been looking down each road as far as I could, considering which would be the best to take. Like this traveller in his poem, I can't take both. I also probably can't come back and walk the other one later on.

Today, I took the necessary steps down the road I have decided on. I have emailed my course tutor to explain that I am withdrawing, and emailed my landlord to tell him I am moving out. So many other people are excited for me, and congratulatory.

I am bricking it, for want of a better expression. I am looking at my comfortable, lovely little home here in Tooting, and wondering why on earth I am about to leave it. I looked at my fellow students and the interesting timetables that we have, and wondered why I would ever want to give it up.

Perhaps that is the difference here, from previous "life-changing" decisions that I've made: before, I had something that I wanted to leave behind that was pushing me forwards. This time, I don't want to leave anything, I just want to reach one thing sooner, and that means I have to leave something.

I just hope that this road will be interesting and rewarding. It will not be without its challenges, I'm certain. I hope my sense of trepidation is a healthy caution that will stop any foolish impetuosity from clouding my judgement.

Because, of course, there is nothing foolish or impetuous about rushing off to America to fall in love with a cowboy, chase cows around, and decide to eat nothing but beef for the foreseeable future...

"Is she stupid?!"

Maybe she is. Let's see...

Something in the mechanism of writing this blog prompted me to be honest with myself about my depression, and prompted me to be honest about needing to seek help, which I did. The counsellor at university, whom I've now seen twice, was very good, and his acknowledgement of how I'm feeling about life has prompted me to think a little harder about things.

When I applied to university to study physiotherapy, life was very bleak. I had a dead-end office job that I largely hated, lived in a shabby house in a busy corner of London, and despite my best efforts, I couldn't find a decent man anywhere and was beginning to feel that I was destined for tragic spinsterhood.

When the offer from the university came through, and it was unconditional, it felt like the start of a new life ahead. I'd get a decent qualification in something that would be a good, solid career, and still live in London so that I might yet bump into that nice, wealthy banker who would eventually marry me and install me in a house in suburbia where I could raise organic children and go to yoga.

Then I discovered Cowboy. I had been determined not to discover anybody, but they say it happens when you stop looking, and after a whirlwind summer with him, suddenly I was in love with a man who was neither wealthy nor a banker, and his ambitions couldn't be further from a house in suburbia, organic children and yoga.

It was early days in our relationship, so I threw myself into my new degree with enthusiasm and enjoyed my first term immensely. I lived in a lovely little house in Tooting (they do exist), and I waited out the long months until Cowboy would visit for Christmas with a rosy optimism. It wasn't clear where this relationship was going, or if it would last that long, so I kept my sights on finishing my degree.

After he left from his long visit over the Christmas holidays, depression hit me hard, and I told myself it was just because I missed him. Looking back, it was the first sign that my goalposts were moving. After my trip over there in the springtime, I felt less and less interested in my degree, and more and more interested in how I was going to end up where I wanted to be: with him, raising partially organic, free-range children and probably working so hard I'd never have time for yoga.

And now? I spent long, glorious weeks with him this summer, and it was obvious where this relationship is going: marriage. Let's gloss over the part where I don't have a ring on my finger and he hasn't learnt that he can't propose with a bottle cap that says "Marry Me?" on the inside. His intentions are noble.

Now I sit in my lovely little house in Tooting wondering how best to forge our life together. Now I sit in lectures and tutorials imagining how long it will take for me to finish this degree here in London, move to America and get established before we're in any position to start a family. Then I think about how I could make that time shorter.

I could stop studying physiotherapy. I could enrol at a manual therapy school in Seattle and study there for 11 months, and come out with a diploma that enables me to be licensed to practise in America without any further hassle (glossing over the whole Green Card thing). I'd be educated in the requirements for running my own practice, I'd be informed about how to be accepted by insurance companies. I'd be two hours away from Cowboy instead of 24 hours.

This is of course dependent on being accepted to the school, on being granted a student visa, on finding somewhere acceptable and affordable to live. It's a little terrifying to imagine just flying over there and landing myself in a whole new city, a whole new country, but I have friends over there already, and the prospect excites me.

It's all theoretical just now. Cowboy is doing his best to be supportive and understanding, although I can tell he is freaking out. He confided in a friend of his that I was thinking of leaving my course.

"Is she stupid?!" was the response. Time will tell...

Returned

I've been returned to London. Cowboy drove me from the US, over the Canadian border (much, much easier than driving into the US from Canada) and to the airport where I picked up the long flight home.

After a day in the Oxfordshire countryside, I drove back to my home in London. London had a distinctly autumnal smell to it in the dark and chilly night air. Before too long I'll be wearing a scarf and my sheepskin boots again, watching fireworks and drinking vast amounts of tea just to keep warm.

But not yet. First, I spent a jet lagged afternoon in my parents' garden, which couldn't be more shamelessly English if it tried.




Then this morning, I returned to university. With jet lag so severe that I thought I was going to vomit, faint, and die, I sat through several pointless lectures introducing us to year 2, and slept through one actually useful lecture about something I will need to know in the future (lumbar spine dysfunction).

Whilst away in America, I had various adventures and learning experiences which I will share in due course, but the most foolish thing I did out there was to buy something that literally eats money... But she's so very pretty...



This is Sunshine, she's a 4 year old quarter horse mare with no breeding or papers to speak of. She's not worth much money, and she came to us with a little too much jiggle in her jig, having been living the easy life for a while. Cowboy loves her. He's turning her into a dream horse.

I get to deal with the sleeplessness and the jet lag for the next few days. Funny thing about the insomnia - it's not because I'm not tired. It's because it's too quiet. I imagined I'd be glad to have the whole bed to myself and not have to endure Cowboy snoring down my ear, but the reality is I miss the sound of him being there. I miss his warm, solid presence. At night I feel exposed and alone without him.

"I ain't sleepin' for sh*t right now," he said over the phone yesterday, which is Cowboy code for: he feels the same way.

He's coming over to England for Christmas, just as soon as he gets his dates worked out with his bosses and I can book his tickets. It's exciting beyond measure.