hiatus

9.2.13

As it was planned:

If everything had gone according to plan my summer would have consisted of me getting to travel for a while engaging my twenty-something idleness in doing way too much in every city I visited with people I love. I would have spent half the summer living out of two carry-ons, stuck my feet in both oceans and came back to Indiana exhausted and ready to dive into all things graduate school. I would have filled out all the paperwork and tired my mother by reading her sections of my development books totally fascinated by everything there was to learn in the world. We would have ordered matching sweatshirts and taken photos. I would have emptied my savings account and been happy as a clam. And right at this moment I would be prepping for the beginning of the school year nervous and excited and learning way too much about Scotch.

Because that was the plan. And I can count on one hand the amount of times I have gone against the plan.

You see, I love a plan. I do. I love to schedule my time and cross things off lists. I like to sit back and imagine my future, even if that future is five minutes from now. I daydream, I overthink, I zone out with images of what it will all be like. (There should so be a support group for this type of Type-A.)

As I am sure you have caught onto, the plan imploded.

I wish I could say there was a good reason. Something so huge that stopped me from going to school and taking that leap. Maybe something tragic happened, or I decided to become a nun or something way more impressive.

But atlas, that is not it.

The truth of the matter is, well, even I don’t understand it. One moment I was happy and the next moment I couldn’t shake the dread and fear that this was a mistake. The money. The distance. The uncertainty. It couldn’t happen. It wasn’t going to happen. And there I was, crying, sitting on the curb looking into a future I couldn’t predict.

Life is a wonderful thing because if you do it anywhere in the ballfield of ok there will be a group of people who seem to be grateful for your existence even when you feel like the biggest terd this side of the ocean. And that’s what happened. I called my boss from Michigan and asked for my job back. When, with nothing but the knowledge that something had gone amiss, she answered how happy she would be for my return, I wept some more as I realized that not only does she have a knack for teens, but also for the weirdness of the twenty-something.

When something doesn’t happen the way you anticipate it feels as though the whole world is watching and judging. But I really need to stop believing anyone cares about me as much as I think they do because even as my return to Michigan hit the airwaves one calls Facebook it certainly didn’t hit with anything other than a whimper. Of course the people I worked with before and who were also returning were happy for me and we bantered about how cool we were going to be, but the infamous high school Facebook friend I’m still trying to impress has better things to do than follow me.

To make a long story even longer, I’m back in Michigan. I’m back at this school. I’ve returned which in and of itself is interesting. In the three years since I’ve graduated from college I’ve returned to nothing. My parents moved three times. I’ve had three different jobs. So even just in the simple act as stepping foot on this space again, it feels right, and good.

My dear friend Marcy is still flying to Scotland on Wednesday and I am so happy for her.

But this year, this time, well this is for a future I haven’t planned, one that’s not scripted or perfect, one that may not be impressive or glamorous, but it’s the one that fits. And here I am. Just twenty-five year old me. Figuring it all out, one beautiful and messy step at a time.

Stick around. I can always promise interesting.