The big day is finally here

This blog post is coming a day early, and I'm writing it from the airport in Seattle. I'm waiting for my plane to China, it's in an hour and 15 minutes. I'm to exhausted to be anxious, which is a really amazing thing when you think about it. I had a series of mishaps here in Seattle today, which have worked themselves out now, and in the grand scheme of things, probably appear minuscule, but at the time, could easily have registered as the most difficult and stressful situation I have ever faced in my life. First, I thought I had to go to baggage claim here in Seattle because I was to change airlines from United to Hainan, and I was mislead by my dad, but it's my fault for not doing my own research, plus he was only trying to be helpful (pardon the run-on sentence). After learning that I was to go to the Hainan Airlines' ticket counter, it was probably a walk of about half a mile. That, with guitar in hand, and a backpack on my back, borders excruciating. When I got to the ticket counter, I was told that I had to check my guitar, and that I had no choice but to pay $110 to do so. So I cried. Thankfully, for once, crying got me somewhere. The ticket counter lady bumped it down to $80. I took it. The woman asked for my baggage claim ticket, at which point I realized...I lost it--yay! So I had to walk another half mile down to United's ticked counter, where I stood, still crying, for like half an hour, waiting, and finally got that. Then I walked the half mile back to Hainan's ticket counter. Well, I finally got my ticket and everything, and for $80, at least I didn't have to lug the guitar through yet another airport, freeing up my fingers for other things, like posting this blog for example. Also, I am grateful for this four hour layover, as I may not have survived anything less. I feel like when this is all over, it will wipe itself from my memory like a bad dream, so long as, I hope, the rewards are worth the sacrifices. And like a bad dream, I can't wait for this airport shit to all be over.

If I can survive this last week I have here in the states, I'll be in pretty decent shape, because honestly, it causing me to want to kill myself. The idea is very tempting, but I guess I have to remember that if I can hold out for five more days, this shit will be over. I just feel completely powerless to my surroundings. This has a lot less to do with my moving than it does with the fact that I'm staying with my family right now. It nearly drove me to commit suicide as a child, and it's doing the same thing again. (I guess if I've changed in any way, it's that I no longer make half-hearted suicide attempts. If I were going to do it, I would overshoot the possibility of death by a long shot.) Maybe it's a combination of both. I mean, there is stress coming in from all directions, and much of it, I have no immediate control over, and for some retarded reason, the shit that I do have control over, I seem to be doing nothing about. I just have a lot to worry about, and worrying seems to be all I'm doing about it. I'm slightly questioning my decision to quit taking my antidepressants, which I did like three or four months ago, shortly after finishing school (by the way, I credit them for my ability to even finish school), but I didn't want to be dependent on something which I stood a chance of being unable to obtain in China at an affordable price, if at all. The depressing, and realistic, voice in my head is telling me that I am going to be no better off once I'm there. I have no idea what my life will be like when I'm there, but that voice is probably right. If I think shit is bad now... this place will probably seem like heaven, retrospectively, once I'm there. In all honesty, I will probably experience the same ups and downs that reality tends to dish at you, and I think a person's location on this planet probably has very little to do with that. It just happens.