I am planning a summer vacation.
I am also planning to cut my hair.
Those two things are battling for importance on my to-do list.
My mother is turning 90 this year. There is a party being planned that will coincide with another birthday, and a wedding anniversary thrown in the mix. It is going to be an event. Think huge venue. Think catering deposit. Think hotels need to be booked for out of area attendees. Think every family member invited. Think Vienna.
The whole thing is happening in Vienna. Yes, Austria.
My mother grew up in Vienna. Her family, but for my brother and myself, live in or near Vienna. And by near, I mean that they would need a train or plane ride of less than a few hours. Me, not so much. I am looking at 15 plus hours just on the plane, with a couple transfers, and booking a hotel from California. My mom is traveling, too. My brother will travel with her, but she could easily, even at 90, do it alone. They will stay with family, in rooms converted from sitting rooms or hobby rooms to bedrooms for the duration. I will not.
This is not because I could not get someone to give me a room. I am sure my uncle or auntie, or one of my dozen or so cousins who own apartments would put me up. They would even be gracious about it. But the truth is, I don't want to. At least I think I don't want to. I am kinda thinking I want to do this alone. But I am not sure. Stick with me here, I will try to explain.
My last several vacations have been with my ex boyfriend. We were together for just shy of five years, depending on how you count, and all of our trips, while seemingly collaborative, were really my ideas. We went to DC for cherry blossoms and the Smithsonian. We went to New York, via train through Chicago, for a Broadway show and a little romp around the city to iconic movie locations (think Rainbow Room and Serendipity III cafe). We went to Dallas for Valentine’s, only to get caught in the Snowmageddon. We went to concerts, and Vegas, and Kansas City. We went to the Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall when he lived in Pennsylvania for a year. We went to baseball games. We drove across the county when he moved back. With the exception of a random weekend the first year we were together, most of the trips were because of conversations that went something like “Hey sweetness, wanna go somewhere? Sure, where? How about (fill in the blank)? Ok.” with a mixture of already thought up desires, and a little bit of online research. I thought it was a joint effort, but not really. Vacations in my head have always been journeys to see what could happen. He was about destinations, and for lack of a better way to say it, he was completely unwilling to take the journey.
Now I am not saying every place we went was perfect. We literally slept on the floor of the airport in Chicago because our train was so late (like 14 hours late) we needed to cancel our last leg and fly to NY or miss our Broadway ticket. The train was uncomfortable , and the food was only adequate to keep from starving. Kansas City was hot. Vegas was hotter. It rained to the point of being drenched and flooded in DC. And in Dallas, well, it was just the weirdness of the year, and there was not much to do in deep snow with a high of 9 degrees. The road trip through California gold country had us in motel rooms that were truly sketch, and the best thing we found to do on the coast road trip was skeeball in an arcade that had creepy orange lights with gnats hovering and crashing in large swarms around them, making the shadows seem extra spooky. But in all that time, I was laughing, and enjoying the company, and taking pictures, and laughing some more. Memory building, at its finest.
But it had a darker side I never really acknowledged.
I always had to ask permission to do things. There was always something more important he might have to do. Realistically, he never suggested alternatives, but the answers were often “no, I don’t want to do that” without any explanation or options for other things. I spent hours wandering around casinos by myself, or sleeping alone in a hotel room while he gambled. I didn’t go to the museums I wanted to in DC or New York because he didn’t like that art, or that history, or those events having never done them. We didn’t get off the train because it was too much of a hassle for only a few minutes at a random stop. We didn’t stay at Coney Island because of a broken phone screen. We didn’t go on the ferry around the Statue of Liberty because he had seen it and there was water. We didn’t go up into towers because there were stairs, or down into caves because there were ladders, or across bridges because they were too high. We got off at the wrong stops (that he wanted to get off at) for places because I couldn't possibly have been right about the directions he was sure I had messed up. We left every baseball game early. He had to be the one to drive. He vetoed off-beat restaurants, and off the beaten path attractions, and unplanned festivals that we came across. There was anger about closed restaurants, and broken room locks, and boats that rocked too much. There was anger about orders that were wrong, and tired waitstaff, and having to wait. And always there were snarky remarks, and barely veiled insults, and absolutely zero gratitude. I eventually, maybe even naturally, stopped asking, and just gave in to the required compliance. I stopped making decisions because they would always be wrong anyway, and I was sure to know it with the sulkiness, or the heaviness of just how unhappy he was about absolutely everything. Unhappy and angry and I could do nothing about it if I didn’t want to be the target. And I was the target often, just subtle enough so it was unnoticed by others, and certain to be denied by him. That left us doing nothing, because without my planning, without my enthusiasm to experience, he had no ideas of what to do (besides restaurants, because admittedly he was always good at restaurant reservations), and certainly not any ability to convey it even if he had. I had given in to all my codependent past behaviors and hadn’t even noticed.
Even today (yes, today, about 20 minutes ago), when he texted me, he was completely unwilling to do anything more, be anything more. Everything consistently transactional (I had dropped off his keys and an article of clothing he asked for while I was in SF over the weekend), with him attempting complete control, but still being clueless. It makes writing all this down (since I was in the middle of writing it all down when I received the text) even more important.
But what does all this have to do with planning this summer’s vacation? Glad you asked.
I don’t want to have anyone else telling me what I need to do while on a trip, but it has been so long since I made any real decisions without deferring to someone else's desires that I am having a hard time deciding about it at all. Do I stay in Vienna for just the party, or for longer? Do I stay in a family space, or do I find a hotel? Do I go over to Portugal? Italy? Germany? France? Spain? Do I go by train? Is it cheaper to decide once I am there? Do I stay in a B&B or a hostel or a posh hotel? Do I bring gobs of checked luggage, or like a pair of jeans and some laundry detergent? Tourists, rental cars, maps, souvenirs? Fuck me, when did I forget how to do this? And fuck it if I am going to let anyone else decide this time. Even in my near catatonic reaction to my own vacation plans, I know that much.
So I am stuck. Grand adventure to a once in a lifetime party, or taking out a tape measure to see if my hair is long enough to donate?
Instead, I will publish this blog.
And, amazingly, I made one decision.
I have a hair appointment tomorrow.
