For me, writing has been a good way to process through my emotions. I’ve met lots of external processors since coming to Philadelphia. It’s fine, they’re all really great people, I had just never met so many before. And more than that, I had never met so many people who had such a strong awareness of the way they handle their emotions. I don’t have that same awareness. But I do know I write.
I haven’t written anything in a while though. Not in a journal, not on this blog, not a random poem, nothing. But in the same way that St. Augustine said singing was like praying twice, for me it’s writing. Writing is where I sit with myself, it’s where I commune with God, it’s where I can be the most honest and articulate about my feelings. Which is why I’m here again after an 18-month hiatus.
I’ve been feeling a lot of things recently, not all of which I’ve given myself the time to sit with and process. I’m feeling the weight of my inertia, fear of failure and rejection, unease of change, uncertainty about the future, and confusion about commitment. The last feeling is the strongest for me. Sometimes I look at my life, where I’ve been in the 6 years since graduating college, the new relationships I’ve built, and I get sad. Not because any of those things are sad in themselves, but because of the collateral damage that has always been present. Leaving college is always painful: watching friends go off to different parts of the world knowing that there will never be another time in your life like this one. Being in New York was painful: at first feeling lonely and untethered and then, after finally finding some people worth building relationships with, leaving to pursue an important life goal. And Philadelphia has been painful: being surrounded by so many ambitious and goal-oriented people I’ve started to notice seasons/cycles of closeness and then loneliness/rebuilding. I’ll give an example.
Last year, I started to build a really close friendship. It was great. We got each others references and jokes, we came from similar backgrounds, we just clicked. But after getting to be super close, something changed. I would be away randomly or she would be busy with work stuff. Our time together started to decrease. And so now that’s the season we’re in. There’s no animosity between us – I text sometimes to ask her to hang out and vice versa – we just don’t spend as much time together as we used to. And maybe that’s totally normal and I’m just overly sensitive. I know it is normal to some extent. But it really is painful for me to feel like the close relationships I’m building are constantly stuck in these cycles. It feels like they never really get a chance. I think about this sometimes with the friends I made in NYC. There were some people I really thought I could be great friends with but I just never really got the chance. Part of that is my fault because I left. But I was okay with leaving because I always knew in the back of my mind that they would all eventually leave too.
A few months ago I asked a good friend of mine who her people were. She had a list of names that I’m kind of jealous of. Because when I think of who my people are, I’m sometimes at a loss. Depending on the season, my people will change. And I’m good at maintaining relationships from afar, but maintenance isn’t the same as building and growing.
Or at least it doesn’t always feel like growth.
Second Chance 