I'm Saving it for the Special People

At work the other day, I got into a conversation with my co-worker about traveling. I was talking about Vienna and she sighed, admitting that she had never been to Europe.

"I spent too much time waiting for someone to go with." was her excuse, and now she's married with kids and can't go. At least not the way I can, with minimal planning and little money. She said something about how you should travel as much as you can before you have babies and I agree fully.

Which got me to thinking about why we wait to travel. I dated a guy in college who wanted to take me to Prague. He had been and wanted to share it with me. We made elaborate plans for the trip and then promptly broke up a month later. I still haven't been to Prague, though I've been in Europe twice since then. I'm not even really sure why, it just hasn't worked out.

When my current boyfriend and I started dating I realized I wanted to travel with him. Instead, he studied abroad in France (and not for long enough to warrant an "I miss you" visit) and then, the next summer I went to Europe while he stayed in North Carolina, saving money for us to move to New York. I missed him terribly while I was over there, spending about four hundred dollars on international phone calls, crying myself to sleep several nights but having one of the most amazing times of my life and coming back with the intention of getting back over there as soon as possible. Preferrably with the boyfriend.
That's what I spoke about at work. How much I wanted to travel with him, how there was so much I wanted to share with him.

It's interesting when we consider what we do. How we save the best parts of ourselves for certain people and then hope they can deal with the worst parts of our selves. We save the best trips, hotel rooms, kisses and stories for the person we love the most. I barely talk to my parents because I can't share with them, and while my soulmate receives a good amount of what I am I find myself saving stories about my day and my past to share with the boyfriend. Because I want him to embrace this part of who I am and what I am. I do the same with him, wait for his stories and want to hear about everything he's done.

That desire is what fuels the human nature and what keeps us optimistic in a time of war, in a time when depression and disease are on the rise and when we can't sleep because the fear of humanity comes out of us like rain. Most of the time we are bombarded with stories of global warming, species extinction and on a smaller level the killings in our neighborhoods. But when you have someone you love enough to share yourself with, it seems more than enough to stick to that and know there's hope for the rest of us.