For those of you who are reading this and do not know me, I imagine you are bursting with questions. Why DC? Why now? What's there? Who is there? How will you get there, and live, and work, and not come home after three months? I confess I have no concrete answers to these questions except that I trust my intuition to lead me through everything. I've got a place to stay, friends and family surrounding me, plans for the future, and a promising job interview tomorrow morning. When I left Paris to go to Nantes, I had none of this - I was essentially going at it completely alone. This time around, I've learned a lot about moving someplace new, from the packing to the adjusting to everything in between. What's more, I've learned my value as a woman, an employee, and a daughter.
The graduating class of 2014 is filled to the brim with some of my closest friends. So, I am often asked the question, "Can you believe it's been a year since you left Lawrence?"
The honest answer is: Yes, I absolutely can.
I don't think it would be possible for me to compare the person I was a year ago to the person I am now. I cannot even begin to explain the magnitude of heartbreak and loss I've endured, but at the same time, I have never been happier with the person I've become. I learned self-respect, ingenuity, faith, trust, and self-love the hard way. When you hit rock bottom and are forced to start again, life has a surprising way of teaching you how to make sure this kind of low never occurs again.
I could go on and on in this post, and talk about how awful it was moving in with my parents, how my first "relationship" was the definition of clutter and poor decisions, how my job at LA Fitness plunged me into a pit of despair, and even more than that. Instead, I'll spare you the details. Today I'm full of optimism and acceptance - two qualities I've been praying to possess the moment this new adventure starts. Perhaps the most valuable lesson I've learned in all this is that life is completely, utterly about the one overlooked thing: timing. If the stars don't align the right way and something doesn't work out, accepting that it isn't meant to be is difficult, yes, but it hardly reflects on the person or people who screwed it up. It's about God's timing and the universe's will to respond. We are merely players in this incredible, crazy, magnificent life, and while our choices are our choices, a lot of them turn into mistakes.
I wanted to publish this post last night, because it would have been four months exactly since my last one. But I'm learning to let things go and accept what comes. Life cannot be a list. The people in it are objectified if you class them according to the qualities and timing they do or do not possess.
My little sister, in all her funny honesty, called me when she got back to Berry College after Christmas and said, "Why would you start your blog again? You're back in the states; nobody cares!" If she had told me that a year ago, I would have begrudgingly agreed and this whole thing would cease to exist. Why, you ask? Because I cared more about what other people thought - especially what other people thought about me - than what I thought. That was a huge lesson I had to learn, too. I cannot go around living my life with other people's intentions in mind. Some would call focusing on myself a little selfish, but because I am horribly altruistic and giving, that is hardly something I have to worry about. In any case, this blog is for me. I would be perfectly all right if it never exceeded 3000 views. The only views I care about are my own. And quite frankly, that's the way it should be. As my good friend Rachel said, "It's about damn time."
Throughout the four months that I've soul-searched and cried and questioned myself, I came to another huge conclusion about what I want in my life. When everything you know and thought you loved is ripped away from you like a huge bandaid from your skin, you're left with the basics and the chance to start again. I've realized that I love to write. And I'm good at it! I've done freelance review work for an app company, I've teamed up with a small travel organization to complete a project and am helping to write French curriculum. I love doing all of this because it stems from my truest passion - the one I have had since before I started dancing, playing piano, cooking, dressing fashionably; the one I had in my darkest hour when I wrote 10-year-old storybooks and 15-year-old novels. Writing is at my core, and from now on, I want to pursue it. I don't know how, but that doesn't necessarily matter. I found my drive. And the greatest thing is, it can be applied to just about any industry in any field.
Luckily for me, I'm heading to a place that needs passionate, motivated, bilingual writers of all kinds.
Here I sit, young and vulnerable at my kitchen table, staring out into the retention marsh behind the house. My circuitous path to this moment was long and maybe a little tragic. But the reward is just beginning. I'm me. On the right side of the ocean, with a suitcase that weighs less than 50 pounds and a plane ticket to the place I belong.
Until next time.
“When human beings are faced with chaotic circumstances, our impulse is to stay safe by doing what we’ve always done before. ... To change anything about our lives...causes great anxiety. How we are convinced finally to change is by hearing stories of other people who risked and triumphed. Not some easy triumph, either. But a hard fought one that takes every ounce of the protagonist’s inner fortitude. Because that’s what it takes in real life to leave a dysfunctional relationship, move to a new city, or quit your job. It just does.
I think it is because change requires loss. And the prospect of loss is far more powerful than potential gain. It’s difficult to imagine what a change will do to us." ~ Shawn Coyne
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