My sister is here visiting. It is amazing and so much fun to just be in each other’s company. Oh, how I’ve missed her. She is away for the day and I can’t help but feel this overwhelming emotion of loneliness. Like a dark cloud in my periphery that I’ve been ignoring is finally making its way in line of my sunshine. I miss my momma. I miss my home. I miss the life I chose to leave in hopes of adventuring the world and beginning on a new path into the unknown. Well, here ya go. 
I am out at the park. It’s a disaster from the events being held here. People have strewn trash everywhere. From beer bottle caps to starburst wrappers, innumerable plastics and metals and papers litter the ground. So I begin to pick it all up. I know they have staff to do this stuff but it is my responsibility. If only the rest of the world felt that same weight of responsibility…

So I cry and I clean, and I sniffle and hold back the tears and pick up the waste of humanity. I can’t help but cry. I know I can’t feel sorry for myself, after all, it was a huge, conscious decision to trek the country and plant ourselves 3,000 miles away from the people and places I’ve called home for almost my entire life. Between sniffles I remind myself that this phase is temporary and a little uncomfortability will teach me something that will become a precious and valuable addition to the pocket of ‘lessons learned’ that I have collected over my short life. The sting of this time will fade and not having a community or social routines to fall on will give way to intentions set and eventually will manifest into the life I love and need to thrive. With people. With people that I will come to know and love. Coming here, to California was step one. Now, it’s time to stop living in my cave which I’ve happily embraced and emerge into the new community in which I’ve planted my life. Soon my roots will take to the soil and my life will begin to adapt and grow here. I’ll make friends. 

I am picky, I know. I am too picky probably with the people that I fill my limited, precious time with. My standards are so high that I’m afraid. I’m afraid that I won’t meet anyone who will be worthy to spend my time with. That’s shallow thinking, I know, but I find that people my age are so young in their minds. I connect better with the older generations. People who have traveled the world and seen things. People who have lived hard lives and come out on the other side with a zest that the younger generations are lacking in. Especially out here. Everyone has grown up in money. They’ve never lived a hard day in their life. I can’t relate to that.

I know they exist…or do they? Young women who don’t just want to party every single night? People who want to connect on a higher level instead of droning out on drugs or alcohol and filling their lives with the drama of who they’re fucking or who they wanna fuck or stupid friends that did this or said that and, “how dare they?” Save it. I’m over it. It’s not like every conversation needs to be weighted or serious or heavy but I like to live my life more along the lines of what Eleanor Roosevelt says, 

“Great minds discuss ideas;

Average minds discuss events;

Small minds discuss people.”

There’s just better things to engage about in my opinion. The worlds events, why poverty exists, the duality of “good and evil,” does good and evil actually exist, why we do the things we do, why we engage in the habits we engage in, what lies just beyond the surface of this world that we interact with daily? These ideas fascinate me. Where do I find those people? I need to get out more. I need to seek them out. I am so introverted. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to find them. I’m so stubborn. I want to interact on my own schedule and on my own timeline. I don’t want to give more than I get, which is something that I easily slip into because the world relentlessly takes and takes all it can and when you ask for something in return it turns its back laughing. These are the exact reasons why making friends has never come easily to me. Ever. Surface relationships are simple and easy. But real friends, real people I can count on and also want to give my all for, it is a rare thing in my life. I can truly count on one hand those people that I trust and love. Without compromising what you love and what you need to thrive as a being, how? How do you have real friendships? It seems so obscure to me. I miss the ones I’ve already made, the ones I’ve already invested so much of my heart and soul in. 

  
I miss my daily routines with the people I love in the places familiar to me. The places that are welcoming and warm. Where people know me and greet me and can’t wait to engage because they’ve heard my name around town or have attended one of my yoga classes. I miss going to my favorite secret places. Mica Beach. Ugh. My heart aches right now. A real physical pain in my chest of longing for some kind of familiar comfort. Even through the tears I can hear the fight between my mind and heart. The logic and emotion are at battle somewhere deep within and immediately after each despairing idea comes a hopeful and logical response. I will build a new life. It will be as beloved as the one I had on the east coast and I’ll be growing my horizons as much as I’m growing in every other way. I will stay in touch with the ones I love, the ones that matter most to me. I will not let go of the places I’ve been. I’ll even be able to add new people and places to my life. Because that’s what we do. We change and we move and we adapt and I’ve always wanted this and I knew all along the way that it wouldn’t be easy. But you go anyway and you learn and you grow and you expand. 
So now it’s time to step out and create a community and start emerging from this hide-out that I’ve become so comfortable in. In the midst of such change I’ve created this little chrysalis of comfort and now it’s time to start breaking out of it and becoming a little more uncomfortable. Isn’t that kinda what life is about? Being uncomfortable and growing to make that uncomfortable place home? Seeing a challenge and rising to meet it? Expanding in every way? Well, that’s life to me. 

  
Who knows what the future holds, who knows where I’ll end up and what beautiful souls and lessons I’ll have collected along the way. I embrace this time. I recognize it as painful and I’m not ashamed to cry and to feel every ounce of it. That’s how it changes me, that’s how it affects me, that’s how I know where to plant my foot for the next step. With awareness and mindful of every aspect of where I’ve been and where I’m going. So I guess we will just see. This moment though, this moment is perfect. And maybe a little bit difficult, but perfect nonetheless, I am alive and healthy and I understand. I get it. The simple beauty to the entire thing. Life. And I love it so damn much.