My first semester of college was so miserable I tried not to
go back for a second.
I had a perfectly adequate high
school experience. I had some friends, I didn’t get bullied, I got good grades,
starring roles in school plays and a healthy supply of trophies from endless
Saturday morning debate tournaments. But I didn’t date as much as a reasonably
cute 16 year old thinks she ought to (although I would like to tell my teenage
self that she’s got TWENTY TWO PLUS YEARS of dating ahead so um, let’s not
worry about getting off the line too quickly there young lady) and I always
felt like the other kids were having way, way more fun than I was. So I was convinced that college would be
different, that I would be different. That going somewhere far away, where I
didn’t know a soul, would change everything.
The reality is that building a brand new life is really
freakin’ hard and I think it was day two before I was sobbing into the pay
phone outside the student center (remember 1994?) and begging my mother to come
and save me. She did not save me. I went
to classes, I worked my weird job as an usher at the football games, I spent a
lot of Friday nights watching “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” with my homebody
roommates. I cried a lot and I was still pretty sure the other kids were having
way, way more fun and that I was the world's only miserable college freshman.
I went home for Christmas and when the girl I was supposed
to go back to school with ended up not having room in her car for me, I skipped
the first week of classes and tried to figure out a way to drop out. As the
week progressed through, I started to miss some things about college. Some of
the freedom. A few of the interesting people that I had started hanging around
with. The fact that the guys in college DID seem like maybe they could
appreciate a girl like me.
By the end of the week, I had hitched a ride down to Cedar
City with my grandparents and at the risk of romanticizing my collegiate
experience, the next 3.75 years ended up being sort of magical. There were
plenty of tears and disappointments-I still felt like I didn’t date enough-but
there were friendships and experiences and romances that built a foundation for
my adult life that I can still feel 16 years later.
It should come as no surprise then, that I also hated the
first six weeks of my mission, the first three months of my first adult move to
another state, the first three months of my second big adult move to yet
another state, and basically the beginning of every new thing I ever decide to
do.
Which brings me to today. In the fourth month of a new life,
with a new job, and a new city.
I don’t hate it.
I did hate it though. I had a few weeks where I most
definitely, absolutely, ask-my-mom-because-I-called-her-sobbing hated it.
I can still remember a distinct moment in my apartment in
Cedar City, after things had fallen into place and I was feeling really good
about everything, thinking to myself, “ok great, so I survived starting over and
now I know how to do it. I will never feel that miserable again.”
Oh 18 year old me, you say such cute things. If you could
only see 38 year old me with the covers pulled over my head, trying to figure
out just what I could have been thinking to give up my PERFECT COLORADO LIFE to
start ALL OVER with a big hard job in a big scary city where EVERYTHING COSTS
ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Dramatic me tends
to think in all caps.
This is the sixth time in my life that I have packed up
everything I own and shown up in a brand new place. The sixth time. So I know
how to find the Target. I know how to make new friends. I know how to make an
apartment feel like home. What I do not know how to do, is skip over the part
where it’s hard. I have not yet figured out how to skip the challenging part of
growing.
Six months ago I knew I was coasting. I knew I was bored. So
I hacked away at all the things that felt stagnant. Job. City. Personal life. It
felt like the right thing to do. It was
the right thing to do.
I just forgot how scary it is. How at the top of the cliff
of a new life “stagnant” looks like “comfortable” and “bored” looks like
“crushing it”. That when you make grand proclamations to the world about that
new life, everyone kindly assumes that you are loving it and it is loving you
and you can’t help but feel like something of a fraud for saying “yeah it’s rad!”
when what you really want to do is run screaming back to the place that felt
easy and forget this whole thing ever happened.
My new job is a terrific career move. I learn something new
every single day and I’m having to work harder than I have in a long time. It
has kicked my ass over and over but I’m starting to kick back and that is
immensely satisfying. I am feeling like I can hang with this group of
incredibly talented people. This new city is impersonal and unforgiving and
there is nowhere to park and even small errands feel like a production. But is
also beautiful and vibrant and I can go from seeing a band I love on Friday
night to paddling in the ocean with friends the next morning. It’s a place I
have dreamed of living for 12 years and even though the realities have caught
up with the fantasy in many ways, in other ways it’s even better than I
imagined.
But I want to be clear. I wanted to quit. I’ve cried a lot.
I’ve had to remind myself over and over that the other kids are not having more
fun than I am. That I am not the only
one who wants to hide under the comforter when facing newness at every turn.
It’s so nice in our super connected world that you can get cheers from all over
the globe when you take on a challenge. But the flipside is that it can feel
extra lonely when no one raises a hand to say “yikes you guys this is hard!”
So, yikes you guys, this is hard.
I’ve never been sorry that I stuck out the hard part. The
truth is the best things that have ever happened to me have sucked a little bit
in the beginning. I guess it’s how I know I better hang on.
