I hit the road tomorrow, so today I packed in a frenzy because I only gave myself two days of turn around time between traveling for two weeks and taking off on this trip. Now everyone said I would learn a lot about myself in the next few months because it's the first time I will have real downtime to reflect on my life in nearly a decade. I am delighted to report that today in the midst of my packing frenzy I had my first big revelation about myself-I am NOT "low maintenance" by any stretch of the imagination. For as long as I can remember, I have described myself as low maintenance and gently mocked the girls who needed three bags to go away for a romantic weekend or two hours to get ready for a night out. As someone who just spent the last three hours packing my "toiletries" culminating in a bathroom bag that takes up half my trunk space, I will never see myself as that lovable low maintenance tomboy ever again. I could not leave one of my three different shampoos behind, nor could I leave behind one of my two eye creams or two facial masks (one is for moisturizing and one is for refining pores-how could I just choose to not have supple skin or maybe worse, to have visible pores? which is worse? who can say?).
On a related note, while taking the train in to meet my only two friends who haven't been laid off yet at my old firm for a goodbye coffee, I was sitting next to a somewhat crazy gay boy who was going on and on to someone on the other end of the phone about how fantastic his life is now that he is no longer at the shelter because his "Puerto Rican Man" had taken him in. It wasn't long before he started describing their sexual escapades in detail ("and then at four o'clock we woke up and did it again! and THEN and six o'clock we got up and did it again! and THEN at eight o'clock . . ."-you get the picture). He had just started to give the exact dimensions of the Puerto Rican guy's little friend, when I started to pull myself up to move to another seat. Then suddenly his phone died and after swearing at it hysterically for about two minutes, he took a deep breath, turned to me and said, "Oh my god, your hair is gorgeous!" To which I muttered, "thanks," which, rather than shutting him down, sent him on a tangent about the "flawless" "windblown" look I had mastered, how I could be in an Armani ad, etc. Finally he asked me how I achieved my flawless windblown look and I had to give him the goods: "I toss and turn all night and then I don't shower in the morning." Happy? Are we done now? He replied without missing a beat, "I need to try that because giiiirl, you are gorgeous!"
So, maybe, really, I learned two lessons about myself before I even started my journey: Lesson #1-I am, in fact, wildly high maintenance (despite a lifetime of convincing myself and everyone around me how fabulously low maintenance I am); Lesson #2-There is really no need to be so high maintenance if I just surround myself with the right people . . .
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