Cali-forn-I-A

As usual, I am saving this blog post until the last minute, in the midst of departure chaos. It’s two a.m., and I write this as the last of many loads of laundry finishes, packed suitcases strewn about me. I leave in a little over two hours for an insanely early flight to San Francisco; today is the day I begin my life in California.

It’s funny how we as humans experience repeat fears. Even though we’ve conquered the fears before, repeatedly, and proven they were silly, overly-dramatic, or ill-founded, we nonetheless experience them once more like the futilistic beings we are. I have that standing-on-a-precipe-that-looms-over-something-huge-something-potentially-life-changing-and-magnificent-but-terrifying-in-its-unknownness feeling again—just as I felt before I went to Georgetown as a freshman, before I departed for England, and before I returned to Georgetown as a senior. California stands before me in all its sunshiny, pop-culturey, glamorous glory that gained it prominence in American consciousness.

And I stand a region away, smack-dab in the middle of my Midwestern home, feeling indifferent and lazy. Because for me, California is not a dream world, a vacation locale, or a vision of summer relaxation. For me, California is a wake-up call to adulthood. There I will have to go through a crash-course in learning to teach, begin my first grown-up job, find a car, hunt down an apartment, and slowly build up a social network that was almost ready-made at college (“Here’s your assigned dorm, classes you have to take, study abroad opportunities, meal plans, and clubs/groups that will almost certainly provide you with friends.”). I’m feeling reluctant to begin once more; just as our strengths are often our weaknesses, what is exciting about California is also what makes me wary of it.

So here’s the root of it at last: I miss Georgetown and recognize that I am not likely to find that kind of community again. Yes, yes, I know that the best can and probably does lie before me. But I acknowledge that I was ridiculously blessed to have lived the life I led at Georgetown, with a phenomenal community of people who strove to pursue social justice and thrived in an intellectual environment. I finally felt settled in, cozy with a home—a home that I had created for myself with like-minded yet diverse family members.

Now, after a lovely few weeks at home with my family and friends, spent simultaneously avoiding and recovering from grief following my departure from Georgetown, it’s time to leave again. Start over. Invest myself in yet another place. A very wise and beloved friend told me that I should allow myself the time to be unexcited before I prod myself into feeling ready for the next stage of my life. I needed this indifferent, even bitter, time to mull over the sense that God has taken something from me. He took away one home and now has set a challenge before me. I just need to accept it and trust Him and comfort myself with the fact that new has proven exciting, rewarding, and fulfilling time and again in my life.

This time, undoubtedly, the future will once more prove a blessing from God. So, yes, I am ready. Mostly because I cannot be anything else—my plane departs in just a few hours.

Here we go.