#5: once you come home, there's no going back

last but opposite of the least

nothing will make you feel more grateful to be where you are in life than a conversation with someone in college or in their early 20s. i feel really lucky to have a few, close, “younger people” i’ll call them, in my life. and it’s not just because they can keep me cool with new words, TikTok trends, or make me laugh, because i swear they are funnier than anyone else i know. the real reason, besides loving them of course, is pretty selfish. sam or charlie, if you’re reading this (which, you probably are not) don’t take this the wrong way, but, younger people make me really, really happy to not be so young anymore. the confusion, the overthinking, the self-doubt, the incessant wondering how things are going to shake out for yourself, the self-inflicted pressure to have it all figured out before you even know who you are…nope, you could NOT pay me to un-form my frontal lobe.

i turned 21 in the summer of 2016, graduated college in may, and moved to LA to start my first job in july. all i wanted when i was younger, was to be older. i graduated college in three years because i wanted to get on with my life. ha, i played myself. my early 20s were consumed with figuring out how i could be great at my job so i could get a better job, get “creative” with my basically non-existent entry-level PR assistant salary so i could live and not hate my life, and find the love of my life. i didn’t think it was too much to ask of myself at the time.

although i had experienced someee “real life shit” before the age of 21; i had an identity crisis in high school when i stopped playing soccer, one of my best friends died in college, and i broke up with the guy i, and everyone else in my life, thought i was going to marry, to me, my life really started when i lived on my own for the first time, in my west hollywood studio apartment. entering the brand new world of working, making my own money and paying my own bills, (for the most part - thank you mom & dad), and being accountable to myself, was the beginning of getting to know who I really was.

i say the beginning because although i wasn’t in high school anymore i still had a core friend group I had known for years, thank GOD, and ultimately these friendships helped me uncover who i was but for a while, i hid my true wants, desires, and dreams, behind theirs. i wasn’t always ready to take responsibility for creating the life i wanted. it seemed hard, and godddd, it is. so for as long as i could, i ignored the little voice in my heart that tried to wake me up. and i think that’s normal, that’s the process. but when i look back at some of the old habits and beliefs my life centered around then, i can see clearly that those weren’t my own. i picked those up from friends, boyfriends, society, my own trauma, just like we all do.

i don’t say this to pawn off the regrettable choices i made on my others though, i was writing my own story and with full consciousness and agency, i penned a chapter or two allll for the plot, no regretssss 🤪 but, i make this distinction because i easily could have never woken up to who i am now and who i will be — the person i believe i always wanted to be, deep down. i just wasn’t always ready.

i won’t be the person who says “covid really changed me” because gross, unoriginal, lame. so i’ll say it like this, covid forced and supported me in making a deep change in my life. because truly, not even a global pandemic will change you if you’re not willing to put in the work. and it is work. those of you who are doing it, you know.

it was really the first time since i *had* friends, that i was isolated from them for that long. it definitely was the first time i was going through something hard without them. we were all there so i won’t belabor my point but the world shut down, i was furloughed then laid off, i left LA and moved back in with my fam in austin, and the two-week *break* i thought i was taking turned into a year and a half. i didn’t have a job for a good 3ish months, most of my friends stayed in LA and the guy i was in love with who didn’t give me much to be hopeful for (my now fiancè) moved to the east coast to be with his fam. my busy days were a thing of the past and i had nothing but time to think.

i did not set out to turn a new leaf during this time. i liked the leaf i was turning before march 2020, thank you very much. in fact, i was working up the ranks at a job i liked for it’s cache, in a situationship i was mostly comfortable in, driving a new car i loved and i was just in cabo in february, staying at a beautiful house i did not pay for with my best friends, i was all good, okay. i thought i was going to live and die in LA with a powerful job, a lot of money, and hopefully a husband by my side.

that was the track i was on, in my head. and it was half true. i had a great job, but it broke my spirit about 3 months in and it’s culture invented the word toxic. i was spending way too much money, drinking was never a conscious “choice” but how i committed to spending my weekends somewhere along the way, and the self-respect i had when it came to dating was either non-existent or so ego-driven that there was no in between on the spectrum of pathetic to bitch. to be frank. again, and you might laugh, but i really do think that is *kinda* normal when you’re a girl still growing up in your 20s, in a coastal city 🤷🏾‍♀️

soooo yeah, I needed something as drastic as “unprecedented times” to shake me out of my life on autopilot and inspire me to make some changes. and it didn’t happen right away. i wanted to go back to my normal life. but there’s a limit to the amount of silence someone can have before they get curious enough to reflect.

when i got desperate enough to sit still, i started to meditate, which at first just meant sitting outside and being quiet for as long as i could. sitting in the backyard at my parent’s house listening to birds chirp was a much different routine from my rushed commute to the office, and i loved it. i felt disconnected and unimportant, which was hard at first. no “important” emails to send or people to meet. i couldn’t be less relevant. a blow to my ego, and that’s exactly what i needed.

after doing this whole conscious thing for a few weeks, meditating, adopting a workout that wasn’t punishment to my body but rather a celebration of the gift that is movement, and listening to my body in a real way, i liked it and i hoped there was no world in which i lost what i was starting to cultivate for myself, love.

time went on and i got better and better at loving myself. so good that i realized i had never done it before, in a real way. i was joyful again, i felt more like myself, than ever. then the real tests came. tests, opportunities, chances (whatever you want to call them, you’ll see i use them all interchangeably) arrived in the form of a 10-year friendship breakup that allowed me to boldly step further into who i was, a leap of love that proved i could trust myself and a new job that showed me that i was good at what i did, after losing my confidence. from there, i’ve never looked back.

i’ve never wanted to go back to the girl i was before i trusted myself above anyone else, tapped into my intuition, led with possibility, and allowed myself to feel. and we will neverrrr see her again, god willing.

i will have moments, months, shit maybe years, that will break me down and make me question who i am and where i am going, but these beliefs will be here to cling on to or pick back up again. for me and for you. once you come home to yourself, there’s no going back.

p.s. all of this work is made possible by, yes me, but honorable mention for my therapists along the way and the book A Return to Love that *changed my life* sorry to be dramatic but it’s true!