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I've always felt a pull, wherever I am, towards where I need to be.

Think of it like having your best friend be in a different English class back in high school.  I'd sit there, in my designated classroom, determined by an outside source, wishing fully to be elsewhere.  There'd be a bright gold-orange light, pulling me towards the friend down the hall, and though I was in this room learning, my mind was out of the room, knowing with silent agony that there is a different space only a minute away, where I'd get more from this hour of my life.  More learning, more meaningful memories, more inspiration, more out of my life itself.

Life is too short to be in the wrong place.  And I felt this frustration back then, specifically with those of my peers that I really looked up to for helping me grow into who I needed to be.

That was high school.

The pull changed a bit in college, as suddenly there were thousands of people that I couldn't possibly know, so where I needed to be became a bit muffled -- so my golden force pulled me instead towards a when, somewhere forward and painfully slow, but sure enough it guided me towards graduation.

And that was great.  For however many of those 22 years that I was aware of it, I had a purpose and force guiding me towards where I need to be.

Unfortunately Post-Academia is different. 

Among taxes and budgeting, life-without-structure is one of the many life-skills for which school didn't prepare us.  

Back in college, the idea of an endless "summer vacation," sounded like everything I wanted.

It was a worthy dream, of not needing to choose between my emotional needs and homework, of not spending every free minute at work, of having just two responsibilities: rent and eating.  

And I was right, my life has become a haze of no choices that feel wrong....but what I didn't foresee is that none that feel right either.

It's the moment of jumping into a pool and hitting the water.  You thought this would be relaxing but at the moment it's painful.  There are bubbles pushing past you in their own busy hurries; you can't breath or see; gravity, grounding, your whole sense of reality has shifted and you have no sense of where you are.

That moment sustained, is what it feels like.

And suddenly I miss the consistency.  

At least with 8 am classes, I had done something artistic by 10.  In a time frame that I prefer to sleep through, I instead was awake, alive, seeing other humans and learning at least one thing about the art that I love, one of my friends, or myself.

It takes me the length of a class just to get to work.  And I spent that time on the bus usually napping or daydreaming my life away.  I wish in that time I could be at a desk writing, or in a classroom performing, or heaven forbid in an actual damn rehearsal, preparing for a show in front of a paying audience.

And that guiding force -- I think it's gone.  Perhaps it gave up on me...or I gave up on it.  I used to think this is where I needed to be.  For five years I dreamed of a better life here, and thought this is where I was being pulled.  I visited for a week the year before I moved and friends who had seen me for all of college told me I seemed happier than they had ever seen.  I genuinely thought this was the right decision.

But it's not like it even saddens me to say that I was wrong.  I'm not giving up on the dreams that I had, or dropping out of life's grad school, or even settling on an easier path.  There's no disappointment in myself in saying this didn't work out.  I suppose it's more like shock.  That my golden light, which helped me find my identity in high school, and conquer working my way through a private university.... was this wrong about where I need to live.

What I want more than anything else is exactly what I left behind last year.  I want those best friends, my old job, my old relationship, my old apartment: that was when I was the best version of myself.  And I want the people back who left me this year, perhaps remembering that there love is conditional, but at least then I could still love them.

I just cannot conceive who I made choices that lead me so far from what I want now.  How I ever gave up what would make me the happiest now.

Mais, c'est la vie.  

Perhaps the sole good thing in this city has been my job.  I was promoted to a position that validates all the weird quirks I've always had, and when I speak to those who share the position: it's like I found my people.  I'm teaching, and I love it.  I get to go up anyone, to customers and to my friends, and say "what's wrong, how can I help?"

And that question fulfills what I want to do with my life.

A huge delay in moving is that I would have to give up that job; the only consistent good thing that I've had for this entire year.  So I'm scared.  And I don't know where my golden force is....or if I can even trust it.

Again, it's that crashing into a pool feeling.  Hopefully soon I'll come up for air.