Thinking Back

Every Thanksgiving I try to take a few minutes to reflect back upon the last year. While I realize I'm a day late this year, I still wanted to take a moment, because I realize that so much of what I have now (and what my life is now) is completely different from a year ago. It makes the title of this blog, "Wanderings of a Harvard Graduate," seem more fitting than it might otherwise be. I think I really have wandered... and am still wandering.

I am staggered that a year ago, I was living in a different town in a different apartment, and that I barely knew (or didn't know) many of the people who are today some of my closest friends. I didn't have this support system, and my job... it was two jobs ago, and feels like a lifetime away. Since then, I've moved forward in every way and found myself. I don't think my core has changed, but I do think that I am stronger. Much stronger than I ever imagined I could be.

It has been an extremely challenging year. Not having my grandfather at Thanksgiving hurt more than I thought it would, though I suppose he wasn't well enough to attend last year either. There are still lots of questions about and within my life that remain unanswered... which is why I am so thankful for my life, the people in it, and the direction things have taken in the last year. I could never have predicted it-- just as I am sure I will not be able to predict what will happen in the year to come.

With fire in her eyes,
me

"I think we just moved way past complicated" - The Holiday

Have I sacrificed what I want, or do I just want something new? This has all moved way past complicated. In everything.

One year later after the abyss...

I am in awe of myself for how far I've come in the last year. When I think of the scared and anxious person that I was after graduating from college and moving to a strange city, I am still ashamed of myself and immensely proud of the person that I have now grown to be. It's hard because part of me still wants the ideals I had upon graduation before the rug was pulled out from under me. In a way, I wanted to be the suburbanite. I wanted the husband and the stable job I'd never leave. I craved stability, even if I wasn't developed enough in my own right to take on that task yet. Now, I look at my life and it is almost a 180. I am the city girl living the Sex & the City lifestyle I always idolized but never dreamed I could embark upon. I have an amazing group of friends, a fabulous apartment, and a job that makes me happy. I no longer feel trapped in a box trying to get out. I no longer feel overwhelmed by the "shoulds" and the "have tos." My life is much more what I want now.

That doesn't mean that I am not overwhelmed sometimes (or even often). Thinking about the future, even for someone like me, is still enough to make me cower a little. I look out often and see an endless abyss. I want to know the path, and I have to accept that I really really don't. There's still fear. But at least I enjoy the moments more now.

And while very little may be the same about my life today versus a year ago, the new things are wonderful. I got my first choreography gig, am founding a dance company, and am planning my trip to my industry's national conference next month. I have several committees to plan things for, and graduate school to think about. This last paragraph may remind one of the whole Harvard Grad mystique. Maybe it does-- but it is definitely who I've always been, and who I need to be. It's the person I lost, and in the last year, have reclaimed.

I share this with the world because I do earnestly hope that everything I've been through this last year won't be in vain. I hope other people can learn from it and see an upside when everything looks as bleak as it can be. I don't want anyone to have to go through what I went through, which is partly why I started this journey and this blog a year and a half ago. I promise from this point forward to write posts that are the wonderfully written ramblings I greatly enjoy reading from others. I apologize for the unedited rambling that appears here. But I needed to remember, update, and recap, so that I can close the door and move onward once and for all.

The Bad Stuff is Easier to Believe

One of my favorite lines from Pretty Woman is "The bad stuff is easier to believe. Ever notice that?" I think it's true. I realize how captive we all are to the worst visions and fears of ourselves. It bothers me how much I am sometimes unable to enjoy the good because I am almost paranoid of the bad stuff or the bad idea in my head. And it's weird because I would generally consider myself an optimist. But the bad stuff really is easier to believe.

"We are not who you think we are. We are golden!"

My mom always says that nothing stays the same for three weeks. I think she's right. As I stand on the precipice of another set of new changes, it's scary. The world I thought existed outside the ivory gates has not been as easy as I thought or what I thought. In a way, I embrace the challenge. In another, I embrace myself. And in a third, I embrace whatever the future has in store.

So-called Modern Love

Everyone knows that I'm a hopeless romantic. I spend a good portion of my time watching so-called "chick flicks" or more respectable romantic movies. I love Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and even Meg Cabot. I am in many ways, a sucker for romance.

I started reading "Modern Love," the collection of stories from The New Yorker, in the dead of winter after finding it on a friend's coffee table. Many of the stories have spoken to me, and I've tried to reconcile a world where love is not defined by my parent's experience. I'm beginning to accept that whatever romance is for me, I will not be them. It's too late. I've dated too many people to have that experience of falling in love with and marrying someone I met the first day freshman year of college... or at least, if I have that experience, there will have been people in between. And it does sadden me to know that my life is not going to look like theirs--especially when they are the model for what I want romance, a good relationship, and even the rest of my life to look like.

Instead maybe "modern love" is spending your whole life looking for that right person. There are mistakes along the way, and people take time apart. But at the end of the day, the picture clears and the right person eventually enters the frame. Even if it's years later, the people who are meant to be together end up together. And it's those other relationships, the heartbreaks, the years of not looking, or of looking too much, or of learning to live by yourself, or learning to live with someone else... it is all these experiences that best prepare us for the way we live now, the way we were meant to live, and the way we end up living.

Perfection (or lack thereof)

I am not perfect. Despite my degree and everything else, I don't understand why everyone looks at me the way they do. I sometimes wish they could see what lies under the surface. I hope they would still love me then.