I changed my mind (again)

Being in new environments where you're constantly grasping onto any familiarity that you can find, it's easy to get attached to old ideals that you no longer align with for comfort sake.

Aside from physical surroundings changing, I have also been experiencing some internal changes... if you know, you know but long story short I have been having quite the change of heart.

I feel like a completely different person in fact.

I mean here (New York) I feel like a completely different person each weekend, but now I truly feel like the clouds have been cleared that have been ever present for the last year.

I reintroduced myself to my roommate in fact.

But what brought me here was the fact that I Love Living in New York. This week at least.

This may come as no surprise, but for the preceding months I actually had a very tough time enjoying even the fun bits of being in such a lively city. In retrospect I don't even know if that's true anymore, but it's not completely false. The idea I had built up of living in this grand place was nowhere near the true whirlwind it is in reality.

Even after I worked so hard to love this little community that I have welcomed around me, it just wasn't clicking. And I think a big part of this was, and still is, the Stubbornness in me that didn't want to accept this as my new home.

I was talking with my therapist the other day about how I need to stop trying to find "home" in everything these days, it seems to only be splitting me further apart. I think my best friend offered similar advice to me weeks ago, but again, I'm stubborn and I will accept things on my own terms when I decide fits best. But especially in these early college days of going back and forth between home and this Strange New Place every other month- it started to feel like I had to keep up with two lives simultaneously. Gosh, call me Hannah Montana if you must, I might even be a Rockstar. Anyway.

On Sunday I was walking back from a pilates class and genuinely took in my surroundings for once—instead of rushing to the comfort of my dorm, I was simply the Only Living Girl in New York.

Maybe it's merely adapting to new routines and recalibrating my lifestyle to this new tempo, maybe it's a change in hormones, maybe it's seasonal depression I've never experienced before!

Something that I have realized in this newfound sense of contentment is that as you grow up life becomes less of choosing between two distinct options—or a distinct cause to point your finger at in this case—and becomes more of weighing out the pros and cons of everything. Taking in the possibilities of where your life could go, or would've ended up in retrospect, and attempting to decipher which route would be most... fill in the blank at any given moment. Efficient, exciting, fun, ...exciting! And on top of that, attempting to do it all in a swift manner.

The more you explore, there is bound to be an inevitable down side in everything.

So maybe the better life gets, the more you recognize the bad in everything; but also this objective "bad" seems to be something I have just accepted in the ways of moving through the world. I think this makes it much easier to be content. I heard someone say doing something miserably and accepting that you will not be happy through each stage of your day, life, hour, etc. is the key to... I can't remember, you can draw the conclusions you want about that I guess. Something about it's more miserable to try to do everything happy I think and just accepting whatever state of being you are in and doing it anyway, whatever "it" is.

And something I have had to realize along this similar path is that just because you were miserable when you did something the first time doesn't mean that that feeling can't or shouldn't change. To spare you a long story, I was bedridden/out of school for a few weeks and basically in isolation for a good sec (aka maybe the worst thing you can do to a human being). Anyway! It resulted in me spiraling and thinking I couldn't spend another minute in New York and instead had to immediately move back home.

And I brush past this as if it wasn't genuinely the most stuck and mentally inhibited I've felt almost ever. For someone who is an optimist by nature, I could not see further than the next few hours and in fact was probably stuck in the past. This was all timed around Thanksgiving break and I got the chance to talk to a few of my closest friends and family about it. Maybe it was my closed mindset at the time, but it seemed as if no one was telling me what I wanted or needed to hear. Of course, this could be the stubbornness again as well but I felt unseen nonetheless.

A lot of times my frustration circled back to my lack of enjoyment in the little things here as I was so easily able to recognize when I lived in San Diego. Even more so though, the lack of creative energy and time to pursue my passions was something that felt counterproductive and draining.

One of my friends in particular mentioned how I needed to hold on and wait, after all I had been wanting to live in New York for how many of the last few years of my life. But I changed my mind! Why wouldn't anyone listen and accept the fact that I didn't like it? I tried it and that's what mattered.

Of course, here I am today, realizing that everything is okay as it always is and that there is no reason for me to constantly make everything a bigger deal than it is (although we know I live for the drama). The day I returned back to the city after being home for a few weeks and in isolation for even longer before that, I was taken back by how unfazed I was. I wrote it off as me simply not having processed the fact that I was back in my Second World and it would hit me in a few days. But really, that was just the way I felt. I didn't have this urgency to run back to the airport and get on a plane immediately back home, I didn't cry at the sight of my sweet dorm, I didn't mind the cold weather.

I changed my mind (again).

But I have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that a version of me at some distant point in the past wouldn't agree with what I have to say today. Sometimes I enjoy this—it feels like an act of rebellion, a point to prove that I have freewill and confidence and can do things I wouldn't do before.

But when it is something that I have more of a distaste for and all of a sudden really, really enjoy... that feels like genuine betrayal. I don't know why I'm so loyal to my past dispassionate opinions towards things, maybe it's the fault of the internet's harsh all-or-nothing influence that forces everyone to have an opinion or distinct self-image, or what have you.

But in the end I can't help but have ever changing opinions- it's the inevitable way of the world (that is the mind of a teenage girl).

It's good to be back. In New York and in this state of mind.

For now at least.

Talk soon.

xoxo,

Mia Lorelei