One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

                In this exact moment, I am sitting in a coffee shop in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s the end of August and I am wearing flannel and glasses that I’ve probably owned since middle school, or at the very least, early high school. Not to mention I am typing this on the most archaic, behemoth excuse for a laptop. To the curious outsider, I fit the bill of a stereotypical hipster. Did I also mention I’m listening to The Fray? Okay, okay, maybe that last part doesn’t help the image! To even witness myself in this moment seems laughably molded into the ideal of what a college-aged female trying to find herself looks like. Now internet friends let’s all take a moment to laugh at me, because my life in this exact moment is predictably hilarious. Now that we have acknowledged that fact, dear reader, let us continue on.

In the past week since I had posted, I’ve moved back to Madison to begin my fall semester (please send me positive energy as I have to take French 203 this semester and it will most likely result in my endless tears). Since moving back, I’ve found the week to be filled with the most curiously contradicting variety of ups and downs. An up, a cat is living in my apartment. A down, I’m living on Greek row and the days have been filled with endless cult-like chanting of sorority girls. An up, my apartment has a beautiful view of Lake Mendota. A down, the realization that it is literally an entirely new beginning for me. Which is incredibly weird and frightening to me as this is my third year of college. Your third year of college is supposed to have the sense of routine and familiarity to it and yet I haven’t felt so similar to my freshman year self since I first moved into the dorms two years ago. I think that it is easy to allude yourself into thinking that after a breakup, or really for any change in your life, that the transition is only going to be measured through the successes of moving on. You see it in movies all the time, the girl is incredibly despaired at her newfound singleness. She pouts for a few weeks, and then she forgets her sadness and life is carried on. What the movies don’t show and what people in life tend to gloss over is that change continues on and you will experience your good days and your bad days. In my week moved back to Madison, I have experienced every emotional shade in the spectrum of good and bad. Yet it will all still be marked down as my progress through change, because the change within my life is happening regardless of if I mope to my friends, get a tarot card reading (yes I actually did this and it actually made me cry and you are all actually judging me in this moment for having gotten one), drink one too many and lose my glasses (I told you I was stuck wearing the shitty middle school ones!), feel empowered and strong, or mild and meek. In the span of this one week, I have experienced all of these and I know that is only the beginning. Change, progress is what I should really be referring to it as, continues to march on within my life, and it does in yours as well, regardless of if you are measuring it through the form of a breakup, or perhaps just a different one of life’s hardships. My point, if you have managed to bear through my excessive ramblings, is that we need to be measuring the changes in our lives not only through the positives but through the negatives as well. Because, oftentimes, the negatives have just as many lessons in store for us to learn as the positives do. And that, dear reader, is part of what I think makes us so terrified to leap into the unknown, but regardless, sometimes we are compelled to make the leap anyways.

-T

A Bad Day Becomes a Happy Reflection

July 31^st, 2015. Allow me to more affectionately refer to it as one of the worst days of my life. Perhaps also one of the best, however at the age of almost twenty, it is difficult to see very far into your own future and destiny. For instance, I graduate in two years and have only the faintest idea of what I want to do with my life. Currently it is teaching English in Thailand for a year. But that is a story to be reflected on at a different time because, as everyone knows, a blog, or any story for that matter, must begin on an interesting note. And mine begins back a few weeks ago on that very terrible day. That day began with the ending of a five year relationship with someone I cared deeply for. For anyone that knows me personally, they know that this particular day was our five year anniversary and I was visiting him in Los Angeles. This really does seem like the perfect opportunity for, if you’ll excuse my geographical pun, a Hollywood tragedy.  And as you could probably infer from the adjectives I have associated with this day that parting was less than pleasant on my end. But I digress. And when I say digress I really mean, booking a flight that very same day back to Milwaukee and crying an outrageous amount. Even at this very moment of typing this I laugh at how ridiculous I must have appeared.  I sobbed in my ride to the LAX airport, wiping my gross snotty nose on my jeans and cried my way through security until the people around me must have thought I (with my blonde hair and fair skin) was being deported or some equally tragic event. It wasn’t until I was sitting at my terminal, four hours early, that I even paused to reflect, I was so beside myself. And it was during this pause that I couldn’t help but laugh (internally of course). Sitting next to me on the floor was a family with a small girl about four years old. This sweet, blonde haired, pink clad little girl was having a temper tantrum because the airport would only allow her to bring two stuffed unicorns onto the plane. To this little four year old, this was very unfair and as she cried and sobbed and pleaded with her mother to please change the airport’s rule, I was deeply reminded of myself. Had I not cried and sobbed, and yes, pleaded for him not to break up with me just hours earlier. Life in that moment seemed very unfair to both myself and to the little girl with only two unicorns sitting near me. But of course, despite this comical realization, I managed to cry myself through two flights and a severe weather delay to Milwaukee. You might think now at this point that this particular blog post, and indeed, my first ever blog post is intended for you to feel sorry for me. But it is not. Because this particular post is about change, and how much humans may hate change, but sometimes it is the very thing we need.

Allow me, if you will, to pause my not so tragic tragedy, and reflect on a different aspect of my life. This summer I spent my time working at a bank. While I don’t feel the need to name this bank, one of its branches is closing at the end of the summer. Now I have spent a good chunk of my time working at this branch and it is amazing the amount of people that come through its doors telling me how upset they are that they now have to drive an additional 1.7 miles to do their banking. Yes that’s right not even 2 miles. I don’t fault these people for being upset though, their routine and something they find familiar, maybe comforting even, has changed on them. And as you can see from this post, us humans, we tend not to appreciate change as it is happening. However I am sure that given some time, these people will forget about the distance after a month or two. Likewise with time, I too will forget the sadness felt on that particular day in the LA airport and my life will continue on as I develop new memories, both good and bad, as well as the passing of time. The very fact that I am writing this post is a testament to that. That in addition to the wonderful people I have surrounding myself in my life. Take a moment to reflect on who would be there for you in your time of need. Take that list and now double it. That is what I experienced returning to Wisconsin. I have such incredible family and inspiring friends. I guarantee that you, dear reader, do as well, but we often forget this when we are wrapped within our own little world and sometimes it takes a personal hardship on your own account to realize the people who are there for you. While I have been given countless pieces of advice and words of wisdom two things that have resonated with me during these past few weeks are actually two books. The first being Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and the second being The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. If you have not read these books, I strongly encourage that you do so. I have spent a great deal of my time and energy being concerned with making someone else happy. So much so that a friend of mine told me, that now that I was single, I could pursue my hobbies and passions. Which then brought to my attention my utter lack of knowledge to what I even enjoyed doing for myself anymore. These books have helped a lot of educating myself to the type of person I wish to be as well as the type of person I am meant to be. And while sometimes these two things are different and believe me they can be, they can also overlap and be the same. And so, in closing this ever lengthening blog post. I take this time to acknowledge that I have passions and interests. These past few weeks have been spent pursuing them and learning more about myself. Currently they include yoga, eating food, reading books, and striving to feel empowered as well as finding the happiness in my everyday life. These things, that I hadn’t spent much time on in the past few years (okay you got me, I always had time for good food) have brought me a sense of happiness and tranquility that I have not experienced in a very long time. And although its only been a few short weeks, I am excited to see what the future whether it be in terms of weeks, months, or even years, has in store for the authentic version of me.

-T