Note to my future self

Above all, remember this: change is scary... and perhaps at its scariest when it's the most necessary.

Remember the feeling you felt in Boston some seven years ago now--that feeling that life was no longer living but sustaining. That the friendships you held highly, were solidified enough to last across state lines. That your job had become a too-tight shell you were eager to leave behind. Remember the feeling swimming in your gut--that feeling that told you that you knew what you had to do, that there was nothing in the city left for you. The city you had run with open arms to, eager and naive. In which you attended college, developed a passion for writing, watched teenage dreams come to life. The city that you always felt was all yours, even when no one understood you. It was your life, it was your Boston. Remember the feeling you had, that moment you made the phone call to your mother, the feeling that you were ready to stop running from all that you left behind. You were coming home.

But it would take you sometime before it all would make sense. Remember that you will feel as though you made the biggest mistake of your life. That you never should have left everything you knew, this person that you were, to come home and try endlessly to prove yourself--in a new career, in a new city, to your family. Remember the nights you cried yourself to sleep, scared, unsure if this is really what you were supposed to do. After all, you were now 26, and people so old don't listen to their gut instincts anymore--the childhood romantic who tells you that you were destined to live in a city because there was a treasure for you to find. But before you were a graphic artist, you were first a poet, after all.

Remember how it took you a good year to find your way, to settle into your skin. Remember the loves you gained and the loves you lost and know that it's not geographic misfortune--sometimes it's just bad timing and bad luck. But remember these men still, because they were all important lessons. Hold the goodness in your heart and let go of the hurt.

Remember that the only sure unconditional love you will ever have in your life is your family. And that like anything, the people, the landscape, it all changes over time as we grow. In a family where your only ally was a man you lost ten years ago, you learned there are no favorites after death. When you came home, you used the time to build relationships with your mother, grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins as an adult now, rather than a child. Remember when it will be hard for a while, until they learn who you really are, and while you form these new bonds. You will fight, you will cry, but never leave.



The truth is, I have no idea if I am making the right decision. That little voice in my head, the feeling in my gut, has all been stifled by age and misfortune. This last two and a half years of my life, draining, because I wasn't really living. I was just getting by. Because that's all I really could do, all you can do, when someone like me is a part of something like that and in the end, loses.

I tried to stay positive -- hold onto the few years of happiness that were the happiest I have ever felt in 32 years. I decided to be happy. I kept friendships that were important to me--I smiled through baby shower after baby shower--I truly celebrated in the lives of people whom I loved, putting myself aside. Convinced I had healed, because little by little, it hurt less each day. Through it all, I would have moments of clarity--moments where it all became clear. And I got by, I kept living.

Until I realized one day--these friends, that saw me everyday and balked at the idiocy of someone who could have something so perfect and throw it all away--were the same friends who stood by him and let him ruin his life. None of us were friends. We were all just waiting for him to walk through a door and snap back into his life, attracted not to each other, but to the romanticism of it all. This boy who had never been truly happy or loved or motivated, now destined with purpose. And the girl who loved him, for everything he was and all that he wasn't--in all of his broken places.

It was when the last puzzle piece fit into place that I had my final moment of clarity, and it came swiftly and unexpectedly, and unfortunately with an audience. At a dive bar on the beach one night, I had met a group of friends -- two couples, one who knew use together and one who did not, but all parties know the individual. I showed up, ordered my drink, enjoying the chance to get out of the house. But within minutes, it swooped in--the overwhelming sensation of letting go. I was tired of being graceful, of laughing through stories of days I was there, of stories I had heard with a twang once before, of a life that used to be mine. Tired of paying homage to someone who was my best friend, and of me, the person who was content yet somewhere in the bottom of her heart, waiting for him to walk through the door. I left a five dollar bill on the counter, said my goodbyes and didn't look back.

I see now though, I was just doing what I could to get by. Overburdened by the enormity of it all, it was so much easier to separate it into smaller pieces to digest. Did I stay too long? Maybe. But was it wrong? Not at all. It's what I needed to do.


It's a big decision right now--to leave a good job in a suffering economy, leave a steadfast life in what some would call tropic paradise. But after all of that, after it all, that little gut instinct returned and I know now that it's what I have to do. I have to keep feeding my soul. There's nothing left for me here. But it will always be home.