Road Block

god, i've been wholeheartedly heading into this trip, full throttle lately
clear
focused energy
working a couple hours every night
for the first time, seems like a direct path
i'm doing it

but tonite i was poking around the lonely planet site and read ALL these really scary commentaries by other travelers. about crossing borders and buses and mostly about rampant thievery and dishonest latinos, mugging and robbing tourists. this is the first time i've been scared. the first time i'm questioning whether or not i should go.
shit, latinos hassle me HERE in my own country. i seem to have their fucking number. and if the latinos there are anything like the losers here- disrespectful, lude, immature and creepy, than i'm gonna have a really hard time, especially not being fluent in spanish. how great could my spanish be by the time i get there? seems like the most important way to protect yourself. but border crossings and picking out legitimate taxi companies and currency exchanges and counterfeit bills.....! like, how could anyone prepare for that? i don't want to go alone. shit.
i just want to see the sights, why do i have to deal with all this?

it's funny how it's not the water quality, or the yellow fever or even the shooting poison frogs that i got hung up on. it's this. safety of a lone woman traveler. this really sucks. i hate being restricted by my gender. not like we don't have enough shit to deal with already.

in 2 days i have to sit in a doctor's office half the day so some stranger can grab and pull at my boob in order to squish it between 2 metal plates. and then another stranger will descend on me to tell me if i've staved this one off or whether my whole world will now be turned upside down.

do i get another chance to eat healthy and make some semblance of happiness of this messed up life of mine, or does my future vocabulary involve words like surgery, radiation and all those ugly scary statistics bounced around cold, empty, flourescent rooms?

this is not what i had in mind for a life, thank you.

it must be breast cancer awareness month, because i feel like i'm being bombared with it. why can't they just leave me alone? i want to run and hide under the bed. doesn't help that melissa etheridge is also getting the publicity from it. everywhere i turn she's there singing that song (which i can't listen to , by the way) or being interviewed. i read an interview with her, and it scared the hell out of me. sounds like chemo is hell on earth. (like we didn't already know that because it makes you puke), and then i went looking up statistics, and that scared the hell out of me even more. they don't ever say lifetime survival statistics. they quote 5 year survival rate. fuck THAT! jesus, i'm not interested in sqeezing another 5 years out. for christ's sake, i'm only 35. this shit is serious. haven't they tortured enough rats to figure this thing out yet? my god.

my parents are wigging out on this one. and i wish i wouldn't have told them. my mother is the consumate hypocondriac, and their worried energy makes it all too real.

so where do i go from here?
all i've wanted to do ; EVERYTHING i've been working towards since April, already 6 months now. everything i have planned for the future, is this trip to S America, and now i'm scared to go. don't feel safe.
so now what? i've given up my apt, many of my possessions, free time, movies, trips, etc.
if i can't do that, then what?

how am i ever gonna find what i want to do.

i am always so inspired by extreme home make-over. there was a couple tonite who opened up a camp for special needs kids. they are doing so much good. and i just cry, because i want to do something so amazing with my life.
but i look around, and good god, i have exactly the opposite going on. why can't i be that amazing? why can't i seem to do anything with my life? i can't even take care of myself. haven't gotten out of survival mode enough to even think about anyone else.

don't know what to do. my brain always wants to resolve a problem like this, to immediately figure out a plan. but i don't know. i just don't know what to do here.