Seven Lessons I've Learned This Year

What I've learned this year:

1. Just because you've found happiness where you are, doesn't mean you're guaranteed to recreate it wherever you go. And there is nothing worthy of sacrificing that happiness. 
2. There is something far greater to me than my passion for art; and that's my love for people. When I was sick and bedridden, I didn't spend my days sitting there writing screenplays, practicing monologues or looking up auditions for when I was healthier. I spend it dreaming of people: to hold my hand when I was in pain, to go on adventures with or even just errands, to celebrate when I could eat or help distract me when I couldn't. I yearned for people; not for art.  
3. Art is still in my life, no matter where I am. Whether I'm the token creative one in a political science class in France, or on a staff in LA who collectively would rather be out making movies, or even just covering whatever I can find (menus, napkins, one of my many many notebooks) with lines of poetry: Art is how I breathe. It functions like an organ inside of me and it keeps me alive.  I can go anywhere and it'll come, too; it is with me until I die.  I will be an artist no matter where I go. 
4. And so I am going. I gave this city a shot AND a second chance. Yet this is where I lost my childhood and earned the scars that I carry. It's where I was first diagnosed with Crohn's, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, eczema, and hyper-mobility and where I experienced what gives me PTSD.   And this second time around.....?  Well you know a lot of that. I'm still not back to 100% after being in the hospital and out of work for four months, living in five homes in under a year and losing essentially all of the support group that I had previously grown.  I knew I had nothing keeping me here when when I lost the woman that rescued me. The first person to say "you have no idea how easy life should be: you are abused."  And yet I am thankful as this group still helped me get to where I am today, but if I am seen as a burden or even just a disturbance to their lives, then it is absolutely time for me to go. Because from my trip I learned that:
5.  Philadelphia is my home. I didn't live there as a child, nor did I ever plan to spend a significant amount of time there. I was angry we even had to sign a year lease, not nearly expecting how much more I would grow into myself there, than I had in any of the eight other cities I had previously lived in.  And Philadelphia wasn't even mine. It was his home that I was staying in. And though I look back on those days having learned that an attempt at a career out here was not nearly worth leaving that world behind, and though I still see him as fool for equally learning the magnitude of the happiness we created and deciding to run from it - that doesn't mean that happiness isn't still available to me.  I went back and was immediately returned to the world that fed me. Grew me into the passionate, empathetic, proudly quirky sprite that I always had in me. It's where I grew confident in my art and in myself. Where I got my nose pierced and my first tattoo. Where I learned the types of artists and people I want to surround myself with and where I knew I could find them.  Philadelphia is my home now, not just his, and though I lost a love and his family with him, that didn't mean that I lost my own. 
6. Because my family is you.  The people who've told me how worried they were when Spencer was missing. The people who've uttered the phrase "I read your blog."  The strangers and best friends that have sent me messages, assuring me that my tales have inspired them: a goal that I've had through all of this.  You are my family.  I may not be able to come home for the holidays or Skype with you when I have a tough decision to make.  But I do write during those times and you are the ones who read those thoughts and support me with your love.  And so you will be happy to know that the people that I longed for when I was too weak to get out of bed, the hands I was wishing to hold..... Philadelphia houses caring souls who equally yearned to hold my hand and help me up those stairs.  And yes, part of me worries if they're only still here because they haven't been subjected to the toll it takes on my support group when I am sick....but at the same time, I had requests from individuals I had never met to spend time with me so that they could learn more about the person they already loved.  That gird me hope in them to last through the hardest times. And I am so ready to love them.  I think there is magic in that city.  And I may not be there forever, but
7.  I know I need to be there now. 

So there's more to come on what exactly that looks like and when it's happening. But my happiness quest focused on why I was happy in Philadelphia; and now I will focus on the how to get (that) back. 

I also have already become sicker since leaving Philadelphia, so no doubt this move will ultimately help my health. 

So I guess there's also:

      8. I am absolutely a nomad. 

I look forward to the happiness that's ahead of me. 

Loving you lots,

Me