A big lesson for the day

In years of having an internet presence, be it through web sites, blogs, Facebook pages, or more, I have never discussed dating. In my blogs in particular, I've never felt that the relationships I was in were important to the stories I was telling. I particularly never wrote about dating in Moldova because my blog and I were already the subject of enough gossip in the Peace Corps and Moldovan communities without me kissing and telling.

Yesterday, I broke that rule, because I figured that having a long-distance relationship during the trip would be a relevant part of my story. I never meant to focus on it, but it seemed like something reasonable to put in my introductory post.

This morning, my girlfriend told me that she couldn't do a long-distance relationship; she had had them in the past, and didn't have it in her to struggle through another one. We needed to break it off. I don't know what happens at this point, because discussing a relationship is very different from living in the aftermath of the discussion. But I learned a huge lesson today. In all my other travels, I've been able to put life at home on hold; I could pause the friendships, the jobs, the apartments, and come back to them months or years later without any real consequences. This is different. This is tough.

For a long time, I had planned on this trip to be my last ever long-term one. After this trip, I had planned on never taking a job abroad, and never doing another trip that lasted more than a month. Today solidified that instinct in me.

I'm going to have an amazing trip; probably the best I've ever been on. I'm ready for the most free-wheeling, most informative, and most fun trip I've ever had in my life. But before I leave for a trip that will include my 26th birthday in May, I can already see the writing on the wall:

I'm getting too old for this shit.