waiting

Being in a town where the only people I know are my classmates with no car and a shitty public transit system means I spend a lot of time by myself. I have had a great deal of time over the past few months for self-reflection. Last year, when I started looking at graduate schools, part of me was looking out of state to be closer to my then partner but a larger part of me was ready to run away again. I felt like life in Chicago was rejecting me. I had spent seven years working my ass off for a job that never appreciated me and then stuck me with an abusive boss, I had no social life because I was tired and stressed and had too much homework and had to study for the GRE, I had dropped every hobby to save money and time, and other than my mess of a recent relationship, I couldn't seem to meet anyone who I liked spending time with as much as the people I already had in my life let alone want to date. I thought moving would change that up. I thought I could just go be someone new and just make a home in a brand new place. I was so wrong. Chicago was always home, even before I met all of my friend family and I was lonely all of the time, Chicago was home. My Chicago life hadn't gotten lame, I had and I cannot begin to tell you how much I wish I was there right now. I neglected the people and things that mattered most to me shamefully over the last two years and I have nothing to show for it except thirty extra pounds, the need for a new therapist, and being completely alone in a town that I will never feel at home in. Don't get me wrong, this is a wallowing moment. This program is exactly the kind of work I should be doing and, despite the looming student loan debt of doom, I know I made the right decision to do this. I just really wish I could do this and still be home. And let me tell you, when I get back there, I'm going to stop making excuses and find a way to live my life the way I want to. I am going to spend time with my humans and cook good food and find a new archery range and get back to judo and go swing dancing and go to the movies and head to the woods to fight zombies on weekends. I'm tired of waiting. Waiting until I pay off some bills, waiting until I finish school, waiting until I find the perfect job, waiting until I have a partner to share it with, waiting to tell people how I feel and what I think, waiting to go home. Right now is hard but I swear when I get home, we're going to do this thing, people.

Things I Love Thursday

cheap energy - apparently electricity is quite reasonable here, I was super nervous about the prospect of receiving my bill after an insanely hot August with ceiling fans and a/c running all the time and I was pleasantly surprised

my cohort - they're all going to be incredible peers in the field and I love being around like-minded individuals who are crazy passionate about the same kinds of things I am

my mentor - he's totally my north carolina bff, we have way too much in common and it's nice to have someone around who totally gets you

new nicknames - my classmate, Adam, calls me "Purple Emily" (there are three emilys in our cohort), it makes me smile because I really love my hair

my friends back home - they're doing such a great job of being supportive and checking in to make sure that I know I'm missed and loved (I really can't wait to get home to Chicago)

brain waves - pretty sure I finally made a decision on what the hell I want to do my damn master's paper on (broadly, it needs narrowed down a bit) so I can start doing research

less student loan debt - I got accepted for a scholarship today that gives me $5000 a semester (which is HUGE when you're paying out-of-state tuition). Yes, it means I have to work in a particular field of counseling when I graduate but, as it turns out, it's the kind of work I wanted to be doing anyway.

random North Carolina musings

• a surprising number of people stopped me to tell me they liked my Bernie muppet shirt
• holy shit, the bugs here are huge
• I feel like I will never be not covered in sweat again
• the buses are lovely and free and air conditioned to the max but, damn, why is there only one an hour?!
• EVERYTHING is uphill
• people are polite and most of them will just have a chat with you
• air conditioning is pretty much the greatest thing EVER
• the neighbors will introduce themselves and will ask how you're doing every time they see you (not just because you accidentally made eye contact)
• there are only 5 grubhub restaurants here
• the produce here is really nice
• the sweet corn isn't as good
• I am not constantly being overwhelmed by sensory overload, it is very quiet
• unemployment is way less awful than I thought it would be
• rain does not make things cooler, it just makes them wetter (it's like a sauna)

Big Changes, first week in NC

Part of me feels like the past three weeks have flown by and another part of me feels like it's taken forever. For the next two years, I will be writing from North Carolina while I work on my master's program. Moving to Chicago seven years ago was hard but I had a car, many good friends in the city already, and I was only three hours from my family, it didn't feel quite so isolated. Even so, I spent great parts of the first year sitting alone in my apartment, chain smoking, drinking wine, watching the Food Network with my dog, and crying myself to sleep because I was so lonely. Leaving Chicago was nearly impossible. Chicago is the only place that ever felt like home to me and the people there are family who I would do anything for. Leaving was full of panic attacks and tears and emotions that I was really not ready for. I have been in North Carolina for six days and, aside from going to check the mail, taking boxes to the dumpster, or letting my dog out, I've only left the apartment once. Last night was my birthday and I forced myself out of the door, walked over to Starbucks for my free birthday frapuccino and hauled my cookies in awful humidity the mile and a half walk to University Mall where I grabbed a burger and saw The Secret Life of Pets at the movie theatre there before walking back home. I have been very spoiled living in Chicago. Though the buses here are free, they are not very frequent and it is not very well set up for walking. At times the sidewalk just ends and you have to go a longer way around to not be walking down the side of a major thoroughfare in the grass. I may need to look into being a car owner again. I haven't remotely finished unpacking (my living room is still more boxes than floor) but I finally caught up on Game of Thrones and Doctor Who and I admittedly spent most of the daytime hours of my birthday playing WoW to my heart's content. People here seem to be very polite and friendly and I've gotten a ton of complements on my purple hair so hopefully I'll be able to stop being such a scaredy-cat and get out into the world soon.

Things I Love Thursday: Starting Over

Let me tell you, this has been an insane spring. Work is ramping up into the insanity of graduation, I have three classes and two finals to take in order for me to graduate, I just spent a weekend in North Carolina getting an apartment lined up for my HUGE move that I'm trying to coordinate, and in the past month I split with my partner and spent a day in the emergency room for fainting on the train platform. It's been nuts and isn't likely to calm down until I get settled in Chapel Hill and find my own balance again. But, for now, here are some things I'm loving:

Platonic cuddles
Friends who threaten to duct tape you and keep you in their basement so you don't move
Pie
Hot tubs
Gwen Stefani's new album
Seafood
Getting my undercut back
Finding an apartment across the street from Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and the farmer's market
Only having 4 weeks of work left
Civil War (and, for that matter, movie dates by my lonesome)
Friends who include you in events you won't even be around for
Being three classes and two finals away from graduation, I'm pretty proud of me

it's a struggle

I, like I'm sure everyone else in the history of ever, spend so much time mired down in self doubt and, let's be honest, self hate. Add on the fact that I am facing a huge life change and all of the details involved, my job pretty much leaves me a shell of a human by the end of the week, I'm still trying to finish up my last two undergrad classes with my own high standards, I'm living in a place that's not my usual habitat without my sweet puppy for company, and I'm doing it all without medication because it was always my goal to do that. I'm struggling. A lot of mornings I can barely talk myself out of bed in the morning and, even though I have a very small amount of time left here in Chicago and I should be using it to see all of the people I love, leaving the house is pretty overwhelming on the best days and well nigh impossible on the bad ones. I'm having a really hard time standing up for myself. I'm tired of people who say hateful things and people who don't apologize when they've wronged you and gas lighting and verbal and emotional abuse. I'm not happy with really anything right now. I know that moving somewhere new and starting all over won't suddenly make everything in my life peaches and cream but maybe it can help me scrub out the bad elements.

the bend in the road: gratitude and fear

(Thanks, Mags, for the inspiration)

Seven years ago was a very different version of me. I had recently broken up from a long term relationship because we wanted different things out of life and I found myself searching for meaning in a string of increasingly bad decisions (most of them of the falling for completely unavailable guys). I had never felt like I fit in in Champaign but I had never made any decisions in my adult life that weren't driven by a relationship. Where I lived, where I went to school, what I did in my free time, who I spent the majority of my time with. Seven years ago, I had been betrayed by someone I thought I could trust and all I wanted to do was run away from my entire life and start over. I started spending a great deal of time with friends from college in Chicago and the suburbs and began finding tiny shreds of who I was as an individual. I had always loved the city and felt more at piece surrounded by skyscrapers than cornfields. All of my adult life I had been waiting for the "right time" to pursue the things I wanted. A flimsy excuse that hid how scared of stepping out on my own I really was. After a night of drinking and making excuse after excuse about how it wasn't the "right time" to move, a friend called me out on my bullshit. "There never is a right time. If you're always waiting for the right time, you'll never go." So I found a job and moved to Chicago. I can't even begin to enumerate the number of tiny and huge ways I have changed in the past seven years. It hasn't always been easy and there is still so much room for improvement but when isn't there? I am ever grateful to:

• my mum, who has always been there to cover my ass and help me figure out the details
• grant, who called me on my shit and told me I could do it
• maggie, who gave me a roof while I looked for one of my own and always inspired me to find my individuality and people who were worthy of my time
• ben, who spent many hours introducing me to some of my favorite places in the city, for always pointing out the guys that were not worth the energy I was giving them, and for not holding it against me that I shot him down back in my "I don't need a guy" phase
• moopit, who introduced me to the people I didn't even know I was missing in my life, encouraged me to get out of the house and find the things I wanted to do because I liked them not because someone else liked them, and pushed me to go back to school when I was too scared to try and fail
• amelia and resa, who have always always been there to pick me up when I fall and remind me how wonderful I am when I feel the most worthless
• dann and elise and tim and sarah, who have shared their wonderful children with me and made me feel like a member of the family

That list is so very small and doesn't even begin to touch all of the wonderful people I've met and the fantastic things they've done for me or how incredibly thankful I am for every second of the past seven years (even the shitty ones). It's why the next bend in my road is so impossibly hard to face. 

Anyone who has read the Anne of Green Gables books knows about her fascination with the bend in the road. It's the next life step that you can't see until you've come up on it and it unfolds itself to you. While I haven't quite reached the part of the bend where I know exactly which way it's turning, I know that it's turning away from this city I love and the people who have made this the best of homes. I don't know how I can face leaving them behind. But I know grad school is the right next step and none of the amazing schools here really quite fit what I wanted to do. So here I am, days away from interviewing at my top choice university in a city twelve hours away and I am so very grateful for everyone that helped get me to this point and so very terrified at stepping out again on my lonesome.