You don't know what you have until it's gone.
Life is a journey
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Look to the future.
Choose just about any cliche or phrase about change and progression and moving on, and I've said it, thought it, or heard it (or all three) in the last month.
It's been four weeks since I willingly and consciously turned my life upside down. I packed up my Corolla and drove away from the life I spent almost five years building. I left behind my school, my job, my friends, my memories. When I first made the decision to leave way back in January, it made so much sense. I felt miserable and depressed and stifled. I wasn't happy at work, I didn't feel like I had many friends, I wasn't making any progress on my career, relationship, or life ambitions, and I didn't know how to live in a college town as a non-student.
By the time I actually left, nothing had changed, yet everything had changed. (I told you: the cliches won't stop!)
My job hadn't magically become a stepping stone to my dream career, but I had amazing new coworkers and a better attitude.
I didn't really make new friends, but I realized that I already had a treasure trove of amazing people in my life, and I cultivated those relationships and was in awe of how lucky I was to know the people I know.
My goals weren't yet reality, but I was working toward them in my own way and found peace in the stage of life I was in.
Living in a college town as a non-student was still odd, but my shiny, new
As one of my friends recently said, our little ragtag band was pretty much living an episode of Friends, albeit minus the careers, coffee, NYC vibe, and 90s fashion and plus Beto's burritos, potato juggling, piles of homework (for everybody but me), and weird Provo culture.
Life was good. I was finally content with where I was and who I was and how I was.
But I still had to leave. Staying wasn't the right thing for me anymore, even though there was so much good in my life, which was really, really hard.
It was hard walking away from a place and a life that felt so comfortable, so safe, so easy. It was hard walking away from people I cherish, people who have changed my life forever. It was hard walking away not knowing exactly what the future had in store for me.
It was hard, but I did it, because I knew it was right. I've lived most of my life playing it safe and choosing what is comfortable and easy. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, I knew it was time to take risks and push myself so that I can grow and change in ways that I just couldn't in Provo.
That's not to say that I have everything figured out and that there aren't days when I want to hop on a plane and go back. Because I have very little figured out, and I miss my people deeply. I don't miss the place, really, but I certainly miss the people.
Being in this strange transition period has been very emotionally taxing, because I feel torn between my past and my future. I've tried to write about and talk about this internal dilemma a million times, but it's never successful. This is mostly because everything I'm thinking and feeling is so abstract and ambiguous that I barely know how to interpret my thoughts and feelings much less form them into coherent words and sentences. So it just all boils and bubbles inside of me, and I do my best to deal with it and reconcile with it. I'm aware of how dramatic and angsty this sounds, but it's the truth, so I'm just going to leave it as is.
This is the part where I sign in a resigned sort of fashion and say that everything is going to be okay and that someday I'll look back on this utterly weird part of my life and understand why it had to happen this way.
I truly believe that. I wish that day were tomorrow, but I know it won't be, so I'll just soldier on.
Because life is not the mountaintops, it's the walking in between.*
*Not my words. Totally stolen from Ben Rector. Look him up. Listen to his music. You're welcome.
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