Why You Can’t Ever Go Back to Undergrad

They say undergrad will be one of the best times in your life, and in almost all ways it is. They also say that it goes by way too fast, and it does. But what they don’t tell you, is that you can’t ever go back.

Because here’s the thing:

Your undergrad experience isn’t just a place. It’s not a bar or a restaurant, or your apartment. It’s a time. It’s a four-year period when almost all the people you loved, liked, or just wanted to be around (in my case other Western students) were in the same place, not just geographically, but in their lives.

It was a moment where any and every bar were filled with faces that were at least familiar to you. When you couldn’t be on campus, like anywhere on campus, without running into at least 5 people you knew, and this familiarity, this feeling of community felt so solid that it didn’t feel like it could ever end, like it would never not exist, but you come back and you realize that it has. There’s been a diaspora of your graduating class, and it means that even if the places never change, even if they stay there forever, the moment you lived in for four years isn’t something you’re ever going to get back. It’s a moment —a feeling really— that you’re never going to have again.

A moment of pure undergrad joy captured by the lovely Nicole De Khors

This is the big secret our alumni events committee don’t want us to know. It’s the thing that’s swept under rugs and disguised by promises that alumni events will let you “relive your ‘insert university here’ experience!” It’s the elephant in the room. Because despite the yearly homecomings, the friends you make and manage to keep, and the places staying (relatively) the same. Once your time is up, you can’t go back, not to undergrad and certainly not to the moment you felt the opposite of loneliness, not even for one night. I learned this for myself the hard way recently.

I came up to visit friends (who are still doing their undergrad), drink, go to ceeps (aka my favourite bar, aka London’s best bar), and honestly, to feel a little like myself again. To for one night be the girl who drinks pornstars, never waits in lines and knows everyone in the room,  a kind of Cinderella night.

However, it turns out that even though that girl still lives inside me, even though she’ll always live inside me.There are no Cinderella nights for post-grads. Our moment has just simply passed, our clock has struck midnight, our magic nights are over and done and once they’re gone, we can’t get them back.

Now, that isn’t to say I don’t still bleed purple, and happily dance through the pain in four inch heels to Fetty Wap, because on occasion, I do. (Though not for as long or as well as I used to). It’s to say that, for the first time, I’m realizing post-grad is hard, not just because it’s a change, but because in many ways it’s also a huge loss, and I think that without even realizing it, a lot of us grieve for it as such.

So all that being said, I think it’s time. It’s time to shatter this myth, that our undergrad is something we can go back to, can re-visit on for a night or a weekend, or at a homecoming event. And it’s time to stop propagating this myth that we can go back, because believing this doesn’t prepare us for how it feels when our undergrad bubble bursts (and how to cope with that), and it also doesn’t help us enjoy what we have while we still have it.

 

Open Letter To Gayle Forman

Dear Gayle,

I am writing to thank you. I needed to thank you for your words, your books, your stories, and to do this I needed to tell you my own Dutch love story.

I first read Just One Day when I was 18 and travelling through Europe. I had to stop. In comparison to the novel my trip felt restrictive, adventure-less (even though that’s how the majority of Allyson’s trip was too).

I didn’t ever get my one day, not in the three weeks of Europe, and I probably won’t ever. But that’s good, at 18, I wasn’t ready yet. Three years later, I still wasn’t ready. I was a mess after a mess after another mess. I was bruised, and defeated; ready to graduate from university and move on. (For good). So of course, that’s when I met him.

Jordy (prounounced Yordy), was shy and tall. He didn’t look the way he did in pictures. He was wearing cowboy boots and an ugly black sweater with his name printed on it. I couldn’t believe it was him. I started thinking of ways to leave the date early as I led him into Starbucks and sat down. He spoke loudly and with a heavy dutch accent. A farmer, he practically shouted about cows and milking (most of which I began to tune out).

“Sometimes though, when I’m milking I start to wonder what it all means…what the point of it all is, what I’m even working towards or for.”

I looked up. This simple man had caught my attention with his philosophical question. There was something there, something that wasn’t easily seen. I took him back to my place where I forced 20 minutes of High School Musical on him, tested to see how he got along with my beloved pet rabbit, and then booted him out the door with a conciliatory hug.

He texted me the next day, and the day after that, and after that. I was leaving in four months, but I was lonely. I gave him another shot, and another, and another and another. A month later, I introduced him to my family. A week after that he asked me to be his girlfriend,and without hesitation, I said yes.

Fast Forward to Now.

He’s working on immigrating to Canada, and I’m spending hours a day helping with the never-ending paperwork. It’s stressful, and terrible. It’s got us at each other’s throats almost constantly. I’ve wanted to walk away so many times. I wanted to walk away from the paperwork, from the stress, from the process and sometimes even from him. Two days ago, he yelled on the phone out of sheer frustration, and I almost did.

But see, he’s home. He’s my home.

Even though, through his immigration situation, he’s become the source of my frustrations, my stress, and my sleepless nights, he’s also the only person who’s broken my heart wide open.

He’s kind. He’s consistent. He’s extremely patient with me. He’s gentle. He’s caring, and when he walked in the door last night, I could see the how pale he was. How rundown. How red-eyed and dog tired. How terrified. How devastated he was by the situation we were in, and by the real possibility of losing me.

I couldn’t look at him. Not without crying, not really at all. I didn’t know you could actually feel a heart break. I didn’t know you could feel it crack as the cracks were happening. I didn’t realize just how physical, mental and spiritual that kind of pain could be.For a moment, I thought these were pains were sympathy, empathy. But I don’t believe those feelings could ever be born of pure sympathy.

I am sure that what I was feeling wasn’t his heartbreak. It was mine. It was realizing how gutted I would be losing him. It was feeling the pre-loss of knowing in a few months, I might be putting him on a plane to Holland while the paperwork gets figured out. It was the guilt of letting myself fall in love while knowing full-well that love might be the one thing out of and above our control.

Gayle, I didn’t get my one day. I fell into this slowly, and by accident. I fell into it despite an existing plan, despite the risks, despite not wanting this or him, or any of it really.

 Unfortunately though Gayle, I might get my one year. Depending on how this all goes, we might be apart a few weeks, a few months, or much longer. That’s the reality of it. That’s my reality.

And you know, “maybe time has nothing to do with it”.
–Gayle Forman, Just One Year

I always told myself the reason I hadn’t fallen in love at 15,16,17,18,19,20, was because I was the type of person who could only have one great love. That maybe, the reason all the heartbreak, and close-calls in the past, were only close calls was because mine was a heart that could only love once. That that’s all I was capable, was to love once, but to love hard and love well.

“Doubt is part of searching. Same as faith.”
― Gayle Forman, Just One Year

Or maybe that’s bullshit. Maybe he’s not the one. Maybe I was wrong and this is just part of a longer story that ends with someone else. Between you and me though, I hope not.

See Gayle, I’m ready now. That’s why I’m writing this very long letter to you. I am writing because I am almost finished reading Just One Year, for what’s probably the 5th or 6th time, but the first in this new context. And in this new context, I’ve learned a new lesson.

“Loving someone is such an inherently dangerous act. And yet, love, that’s where safety lives.”
― Gayle Forman, Just One Year

In this mess, I have tried many times to escape this immigration prison. And in doing so, I’ve built myself many different ones. In an attempt to deal with, understand and manage my stress, pain and anxiety, I have locked out the one person, locked out the love I am putting myself through all this for.

Sometimes you escape one prison only to find you’ve built yourself a different one”
― Gayle Forman, Just One Year

Worse than this, I have justified the building of these prison walls, rationalized them time and again. Convinced myself they were a refuge. I have held onto them for dear life, built them up strong with my resentment towards him for putting me in this immigration prison, for making me love him and in doing so, putting me here.

Yesterday, I tore them down.

I sobbed into him as the reality hit. I took refuge in him and let him wrap himself around me. I accepted he will probably have to leave, probably for at least a few months. I cried and cried, letting him harbor my fears for the months ahead, the pure loss of being an ocean away.

Gayle, loving someone is already such an inherently dangerous act. However, loving him, loving a foreigner, makes something already dangerous, also wildly and uniquely precarious.

When I first went to read Just One Day and Just One Year again, I was initially angry that this wasn’t something you captured, but as I once again reach the ending, I am realizing that isn’t the important lesson. It is the necessary sentiment the book needed to capture. That quote is. That’s the applicable piece.

Because, love isn’t a prison. It isn’t something you protect. It isn’t something you should protect yourself from, nor is it something you can protect from external factors. It’s a risk. It’s something you have to risk. And it’s always a risk, no matter the situation, no matter the circumstances.

That is to say, love is necessarily a risk. The nature of it is such that you must risk. That you cannot protect, because in protecting love, even with purest intentions, you lose it.

For in protecting love, you are protecting yourself from the loss of that love, and in doing this, you inadvertently protect yourself from love, from having love and from being able to love. And so, there can be no protection. There can only be risk.

To most, I think this seems scarier, but your book helped me to understand it better. I understand now, that in protection there is no risk, but there is also no love. In love, there is risk, there is loss, but even if it is only for a moment, there can be love. This is what matters, this is why we must risk.

This is why I tore my walls down, because if I didn’t risk loving Jordy. If I didn’t risk it with him, I’d lose him anyway, probably prematurely.

Thank you so for helping me understand this, for helping me realize this. For helping me love.

Hannah

 

Attached in Your 20s: Being Single vs Being Serious

Remember when we were in middle school and it suddenly felt like everyone was coupling up? When suddenly recess became a receptacle for the holding of sweaty 12 year old hands and illicit makeouts on the pavement.

Well, post-grad feels kinda like that. (At least I think so).

It’s like all of a sudden we all went from making out in bars with people whose names we would never know (or care to know) and taking home strangers, to declaring our love on the internet and making things #FacebookOfficial.

Maybe this is our attempt to adult?

(Step One: Find life partner)
(Step Two: Tell everyone???)

Now before anyone gets offended I too have joined the love-zombie army. (His name is Jordy and he takes up most of my instagram lately). However, being the wildly independent-unattached-don’t-need-no-man kind of girl that I am (was?) my membership to the love club is kind of freaking me out.

Here’s why:

1. Because my boyfriend is dutch and his immigration paperwork is a nightmare and I love him and want to marry him one day but not yet because I’m only 21 and the idea of that is scary as fuck and also I don’t want a green card marriage and neither does he.(I’m guessing that’s just a me problem though)

   SO ANYWAYS

2. Because I see a future with him, and suddenly what I want in life, and what I picture for myself and my life is starting to include him.

   Now, that’s not saying my plans are beginning to revolve around him, or even my life, but I’m seeing how easily they could start to, and the ease with which I see this terrifies me. Which leads me to….

3. I am terrified of compromising on what I want/or wanted because I want him (forever).

   I always prided myself on never letting myself revolve around a guy. Ever. Period. The end. I always made my own choices, my own decisions, and if they happened to be amenable for/to him then LUCKY HIM! If not….then Bye Felicia.

   But I’m starting to think more and more that maybe it’s okay to compromise on some things in the name of being happy, because what you want can change. That what you want in life is allowed to change, maybe even supposed to change as you get older/grow/whatever. Because while you do change, as long as you still are a person you like and that your past self would also like and be proud of, don’t beat yourself up for the change (I think?).

   BUT

4. Isn’t this is the time when you are supposed to get to know you? Like the solo you? Or are those just articles and lists to make the single girls (aka me 8 months ago) feel better?

   I don’t know. A friend told me a little while ago that in the end you just have to do what makes you happy. (Which is a cliche but still true). And truthfully, I don’t think I’ll ever find someone that makes me this happy (even with the constant immigration headaches).

   My boyfriend is patient, kind, tolerant of my uniqueness (read: weirdness). He doesn’t mind tickling my feet for a whole movie, puts up with me loving my rabbit more than him (sorry babe), and works harder than anyone I know. He’s gentle, sweet, and sometimes he’s even funny. I could go on and go, but I’ll stop there because you probably get the point.

Honestly, despite these things (these GREAT things about being in a serious relationship) I’ll probably always worry a little that I didn’t sleep with enough people, or sow enough wild oats. I’ll worry that I settled down too soon or met the one to early (assuming things work out, knock on wood) (((I really really really hope they do))).

I know a lot of my friends with seriously-gonna-marry-him SO’s feel the same.I guess the grass is always greener right?

Though, in these moments when I have these doubts about it being “too-soon” “too-limiting” “too-much” for 21, I try to remember what it was before him. Sometimes, it was great. I had a lot of fun. A lot.I kissed a few boys (and a few I shouldn’t have). I did some things I’m not proud of and some I still really am  😉 . I spent time alone. I was selfish and could leave my phone off without someone worrying I was mad at them (my friends know I am not a fan of charging my phone). I focused on my rabbit, and travelled alone.

Honestly, sometimes I miss it all. Sometimes I can tell my friends miss single Hannah too. (Though they definitely don’t miss sad-lonely-broken hearted Hannah, the Hannah that often accompanied fun single Hannah.) However, I wouldn’t trade fun-singledom for my serious relationship. I wouldn’t trade what I have with Jordy for anything in the world.

So all that said, what’s better? Single or Serious?

Idk.

See, both single and serious are scary, and though I wouldn’t trade Jordy for anything, I can’t honestly say that one kind of scary is better or worse than the other. Nor can I say that one status is better  (or worse). I guess all I am saying is that just being 21 is scary.

Being 21 and in a serious relationship is scary because you worry that having an SO prevents you from being the 21 that you are “supposed to be”. However, that isn’t to say being 21 and single is any easier. Like I said before, 21 any which way is hard.

For me personally, it’s scary and it’s hard because I’m terrified I’m missing out. I am fearful that being attached means I will not only miss the growth of my 20s, but also that I will lose the best things about single Hannah. Her ambition, her candour, her creativity, her drive, her wit. Though as far as losing these things goes, I don’t think I have. I think I’ve remained the person I am. I think I’ve finally found someone who lets me be those things, the ones I am most proud of. I think maybe seriously-attached isn’t the personality catalyst  I thought it was.

That isn’t to say it hasn’t and won’t be a struggle to remain a whole person outside of my relationship. Not losing yourself in someone you love that much? I think that’s tough, especially for people our age. But then, maybe your 20s are for getting lost?

No, maybe not in that sense. Regardless, I don’t have any plans to lose myself. I like her too much. I think I’ll keep her, or at least the best parts of her around. After all, isn’t that what your 20s are really for? Finding the best parts of yourself, for discovering those things inside you and learning how not to let them go, single or taken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The In-Between Bits

When I first met my now-boyfriend, what was involved with him staying in Canada was both distant and abstract to me. It was something to be worried about if we stayed together, and that if I was around for, I planned on being a passive bystander to.

I’m pretty sure someone famous said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Though cliché, this is where I found myself a few months into dating him: in the middle of my horribly gone-awry plan to be unattached and ready to independently take on post-grad life. Instead of these things, I was not only attached, but also very much in love, and caught up in the messy reality of him having to go back to Holland.

I was sobbing into the phone and then off the phone. Ugly, raw, primal sounds, the sounds a heart makes when it’s breaking. All this made worse by my sudden and painful realization that without my knowing it, I’d fallen in love with him.

Realizing this just as he having to leave was a stupid and bitter kind of irony. It was the kind better left for indie-rom-coms without happy endings. I couldn’t believe my love story was about to be reduced to this. I had flashes of 2011’s “Like Crazy”.

I didn’t want to spend years caught up in immigration paperwork and applications for Visas. I didn’t want to have a relationship spread across continents and time zones.

I mean yes, there is a kind of romance in that, but when faced with the bitter reality of it, the romance all but disappears.

I didn’t want a life that was on hold, that was waiting for him to be back in it again. I didn’t want to be “halved by the halves that halve you halve,” and even a few moments into the reality of it, I knew the bleakness of “Like Crazy” was a reflection of such a situation’s reality. I knew I didn’t want that, but I also knew I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone.

I’d dated. A lot.

I knew what was out there and it wasn’t a hell of a lot. There almost certainly wasn’t someone as patient, as kind, as gentle, as shy, as anything in the combination, in the way, that he was. I won’t be so dramatic as to say moving on wasn’t an option. It was something we’d talked about very early on.

Late one night over text, he told me that if he had to go back, and go back for a long time, he didn’t want me to wait for him, or to feel like I should. He said, “If you find someone that makes you happy, don’t worry about me or how I’ll feel. Just go be happy.”

We’d barely been dating at this point. We hadn’t said “I love you,” but in that moment I knew. I’d never met anyone that selfless. I’d never met anyone who would so easily put my happiness before their own.

As I sat staring at my phone with bleary eyes, I suddenly knew  that I was  so screwed. I knew that while he might be good to enough to let me go, there was no way I could do the same. I knew then that six months or so later, I’d be fighting like hell to keep him here because I couldn’t imagine being without him.

Today, like the last few days has been a hard one. I’ve cried a lot more than usual. I’ve been testy and on edge, taking my stress out on the people I love most. I’ve also, in a lot of ways, been the best version of myself. A fighter, a negotiator, a caretaker, a clown, a partner, a sympathizer, a girl in love.

Truthfully, I still don’t know what’s going to happen with him or with us, and honestly that’s the worst part. I know what I hope for. I know what I want to happen, but I don’t know what will.

I also know I love him. I know that even with all the stress I wouldn’t trade him for anyone, and I truly honesty absolutely wouldn’t trade what we have for anything.

My Grandma told me the other day that the Lord has a plan, and I should just trust in him. Neither of us are religious, not my boyfriend nor I, but right now that’s exactly what we’re going to have to do. It might suck right now, it might be really hard, but we can only trust that what’s supposed to happen will. We have to believe we have a chance.

Love,

Hannah

So I have this friend…

So I have this friend and honestly, what I have with him is nothing short of a miracle.

It’s this weird twilight zone between a brother, a best friend, and my Meredith-Christina-type-“Person” that all these articles keep talking about. He’s the one that rarely understands me, but loves me enough to try, (or at least to send me and inspirational youtube video to get through it) and is definitely absolutely the only man on this earth my boyfriend never worries about me being alone with.

He’s beautiful and flawed, and also this almost unprecedented combination of kindness and tough that leaves you in awe and just a little breathless. Unfortunately though, he’s also chosen to move to Australia (aka literally the other side of the world) to pursue his law degree.

Now, I’m not one for sap (jk I totally am). However, a week before putting him, yet another person I love on a plane, I’m feeling just a little sappy. So I thought I’d tell you about him, the person who has been there for me since I met him, who has literally the best taste in music, and who helped me find the love of my life (aka Jordy).

Specifically though, I’d like to tell you one of my favourite memories of him, one that I don’t have a picture of, but is nonetheless burned in my brain, so here it is:

We’re in the car. We’re driving from London to somewhere in the GTA where he’ll meet a buddy for a night in the city with all the guys. His data-less phone is bluetooth connected to the car radio and Spanish music is bouncing around the car. He’s bobbing his head in the passenger seat, and I’m glancing over at him about to ask him to translate the Spanish lyrics, and it hits me, just like that, this feeling of contentedness with the moment, with a world that is so fucked up and twisted and full of broken people and stories that rarely have happy endings, but that somehow helped my best friend find his way to me once again.

I thank God for a world where the boy who wasn’t supposed to be back for another 2 years is sitting in my passenger seat with a box of donuts at his feet, his Spanish music blasting over my speakers. I thank God for a friend that helped me see what I almost missed out on, an incredible hearted Dutch kid with hair that was too long, and scuffed cowboy boots.

I thank God. I thank the universe. I thank his mother. I thank fate and all the powers that be. I thank myself. I thank him, and I thank us.

I thank us for managing to stay close across a 14 hour time difference and 9000 miles, so that for exactly an exactly 2 hour car ride, I could have the privilege of his quasi-lectures, his insights, his lyric translations and explanations, his bad jokes, his frustration over lack of a phone, and of course, his excellent road trip playlist.

I thank us. We did it kid. Here’s to surviving two more years of long distance friendship, and actually remembering to skype as well as facebook chat.

Why a Turkey Wishbone Taunted Me

So randomly last night, my family had a turkey. A thirty pound turkey for dinner.

(Needless to say we will all be eating turkey for the next week or so, but that’s beside the point of this post).

The real point of this post is that this morning I woke up to find the wishbone sitting on the kitchen window sill, and that damn wishbone, it was taunting me. It was mocking me with all the wishes I need granted right now, and the great unfairness that IF (and that’s a big if), I get the bigger piece when it’s pulled apart, then only one measly little wish will come true.

But that still got me thinking. If I had to choose one wish? What would I wish for?

If I had to pick one wrong in my life to make right. If I had to pick one hole in my heart to fill, what would I choose? What is at the very top of my list of current heartbreaks.

(You probably see what I mean about how this wishbone was taunting me now. See said wishbone to your right).

But honestly, at first I didn’t know. What would I wish for? What would I choose?

Would I wish for my situation to improve?
Would I wish for my best friend not to live so far away?
Would I wish that Toronto and everyone in it wasn’t a 1.5 train ride away, and that traffic didn’t turn a 40 minute drive downtown into a nightmare of stop and go.
Would I wish for more money? (God knows I could use more money).
Would I wish for my Dad’s chronic pain to go away?
Would I wish for my the happiness of my friends who SO deserve it.
Would I wish away my mother’s migraines to suddenly cease?
Would I wish for my little brother to get more sleep?
Would I wish therapy was free?
Would I wish for my Grandfather to make better choices?
Would I wish for my panic attacks to stop?
Would I wish for justice?
Would I wish for the world, for humanity and right some of the wrongs that aren’t so personal to me?

Unfortunately not.
Unfortunately not with only one wish.

No that one wish, I knew almost immediately what it would be. I knew what I would choose if I only had one wish, because that wish while not righting all the wrongs, while it wouldn’t fill all the holes in my heart, while it certainly wouldn’t solve everything, it was still the one thing I wanted more than any of those other things. It was still the one thing that might just make all the other things a little easier. That would make my battles a fairer fight. That would me a little bit stronger, and a whole lot happier.

So you’re probably wondering, what would it be?
What would I wish for if I only had one wish?
What would I dedicate that semi-dried wishbone to?

Well, it’d be for Jordy. My star-crossed lover from Holland, who’s working in Germany and trying to make his way back to Canada to see me.

It’d be for the person who believes in me, fights for me, and loves my rabbit like his own child. It’d be for the face that makes me set an earlier alarm just so I can spend a little extra time looking at him.

It’d be for love.
For the one I love.
For the kind of love that’s once in a lifetime.
It’d be to have that love in bed next to me in the mornings.
It’d be for the thing, the only thing really, that makes anything and everything else worth anything.
It’d be for love.
That would be my wishbone wish.

Xx,

Hannah

Why Love Letters are Pure Magic

There’s a kind of magic in love letters.

It’s a magic that you don’t find in a text message, or an email. It’s a magic you couldn’t create, couldn’t replicate in those mediums no matter how hard you tried.

And this magic, it’s in both the writing of them and in the receiving of them. It’s why I love them. It’s why it’s so important to me to buy a card, pen a message and send it off in the mail. It’s why I’ve been waiting all day to open the one that arrived for me from Holland today.

Maybe part of this magic, is that it makes it real. Maybe it’s that in holding something physical in your hand, something they touched and sealed, it makes the person feel real. Maybe it’s that the physicality of a love letter makes your loved one feel concrete in a way that no text message, or email or phone ever call really can.

But then, maybe the true magic is in the feeling of it, the feeling of writing a letter and sending it, and how it’s so different from anything else in the 21st century that you send.

See, when you write a letter, you can’t recall it, you can’t own it, and you can’t keep it. You simply put all this feeling, all this love into it and you send it away. You can’t go back and re-read it. It isn’t there to overanalyze and overthink. It’s given, completely and utterly to the person who receives its. You give your love, all your thoughts, your words, and all you keep is the echo of these things.

Once it’s sent all you have is the feeling of it. You don’t have the actual things you said.

But they do.

They have those words, those feelings, those thoughts. They have it, right there in that letter. That letter that travelled a long way, all the way really, to bring those things to them.

There’s something romantic in that. Something magical, something that keeps the love letter from being old fashioned. Something that makes it necessary even though we have Skype, and Facebook, and WhatsApp. Something that gives it a place in today’s long distance relationship. Something that makes me grateful for mail people, and mailboxes, and for a way of communicating that’s survived into 2017.

xo

Hannah

It’s Been One Week

It’s like being born again.

That’s the best way to describe life after putting my heart on a plane. It’s like being born. It’s raw and painful and a little surreal. It’s like waking up to a life where suddenly you know you have love in a way you didn’t before. You have real, physical pure love.

Because that’s how he loves me. In a way no one ever has. It’s almost entirely pure. Selfless. Simple.

However, it also feels unbelievably disorienting. Like I don’t quite know how to walk yet, or talk yet, or exist in the way most people exist. (Like I said, it’s like when you’re first born).

I put on clothes today, or tried to. They didn’t fit. (And I don’t mean that in some grandiose metaphoric sense, I mean they literally were too small for my current body). That felt disorienting. Those clothes used to fit like a glove, kind of like my life did, like the person I was before him fit my life. Now I could barely get them on, I do hope they fit again one day (and soon) I liked who I was before Jordy just fine. I don’t want to discard the pieces of that person, not all, maybe not even some.

I can feel things coming back though. I can feel how hungry I am. I want things more. I want to sink my teeth into something, to dig into it and pull back the layers until I not only understand it, but I can use it and work with it, manipulate the information like a tool.

I am sad though, but in a resigned kind of way. I know this is necessary and I realize it more everyday (especially given how disoriented I feel), and honestly as much as I miss him I am glad he’s not here. See, I am more certain with the more than ever that I need this. I want him to come back to a whole person, but more than that I want this for me. (And even though he isn’t the cause, you can’t reboot a computer and use it at the same time). I want to be without crutches and either fall or fly.

And if I fall. I want to pull myself back up, and this week, even though it’s been incredibly hard. I’m doing that. I can feel it. I can feel the falls, and the crashes, and I can feel myself stand up. I can feel this incredible resilience, this strength and hardness. This willingness not to let anything take from me what I hold most sacred, because contrary to popular belief, being without the person you love romantically isn’t the worse thing that will or can ever happen. It’s harder maybe then a lot of things that happen, but in comparison to the possibilities? It’s not.

So that’s where I am right. That’s how I feel right now.

I know it’s a mixed bag. I know it’s a little contradictory, a little bit of a mixed bag, but it’s what I’ve got. It’s what I’ve got to say.

Tonight I Wanna Cry

For the past couple of months my relationship has defined me. It has been everything to me. It was the lifeboat I clung too after the last few months nearly drowned me, but I just took that lifeboat, the heart that’s been keeping the blood pumping through my body, and I put it on a plane to Holland.

Now, know that as I am writing this, he’s just taking off, so of course you’re getting me more than a little raw, but you’re also getting me in the most honest way possible, because right now I feel these feelings so absolutely they’re consuming me, they really are. They’re drowning me, and yet I also feel them lifting me up.

See, the time I’ve had, no matter how rough, (or how bitter recent events made it), it was love, pure and simple. It was waking up to someone everyday who adored me, and looked at me in a way I never thought anyone even could. It was the way he advocated for me, believed in me, and reminded me that no matter what happens I should never become someone else. It was love. Love for me, and for life, our life, in it’s simplest purest form.

Yet, these few months have also been a ticking clock. Slowly moving, slowly pushing towards today, towards this moment where I’m shaky and vulnerable and just so damn sad and scared and also kind of ready.

I’m ready to pump my own blood again, or I need to be. I’m ready to stop living on a timer, stop putting pressure on minutes and hours as they run through my hands. I’m ready to rejoin the world again, and learn how to live in it without just him. I’m ready to take on the kind of life I wanted post-grad, I’m ready to fight for it, and fight is what I’ll have to do.

After all, this isn’t going to be easy. There’s nothing normal about my situation with him, or with the things that have happened to me in recent months (outside of our relationship), and with all of that combined it’s going to be a real struggle—a fight even- to even get out of bed some days. I mean it certainly has been even with him to help pull me out.

However, I need to be take on this fight. I need to relearn how to be my own gladiator, my own savior, even my own person again, because I used to be so proud of being those things, of being self sufficient and it kills me that right now I’m not.

But the truth is, I’m not.

I’m not self-sufficient, or whole, or even happy. I’m not any of the things I should be, or want to be for him, or with him.

I’m just lost.

But I’m also not.

I’m also right here, and alive and in love, and still holding the heart of a man on a plane who’s gone right now, but hopefully not for always, and I also have a unique chance to get found, to get myself back. To turn pages in a book that I’ve shelved for so long, and find the words that he fell in love with in the first place, to find the character and heart of the girl that he’s holding now as his plane moves farther away.

Because I if didn’t want this for me, Jordy didn’t want it more. He didn’t want the circumstances to put our lives on hold like this. He didn’t want to have to squeeze months into hours, and spend hours dreading months apart. He wanted normal. He wanted our own rooms and jobs and lives, that of course would coincide but never be so convergent, but also never so divergent at the same time. But that’s what we’ve got. That’s our reality. That’s our story, and even as I sit here crying my eyes out, I know I’ll make the best of it.

I know I’ll fight. I’ll fight to pull myself up out of bed, and force myself to reengage in life. I know I’ll hit the ground running and land that post-grad job. I know I’ll figure out this long distance thing. I know I’ll find my friends again, and thank them for their patience and for their support. I know I’ll get back into my old routines and I know I’ll relearn how to be on my own again. But I won’t do any of that right now, and I won’t do any of it tonight.

Because tonight, I just put the love of my life on a plane to Amsterdam. Tonight my heart is breaking a little bit, (okay a lot), and so tonight, I’m just going to cry.

 

Growing Up is Never “Graceful”

There’s this saying that’s been floating around in my head: “Growing up gracefully,” and I hate it. Like I really fucking hate it. There is no way to grow up gracefully. No way. It’s impossible, implausible it’s impatient, it’s a million other words that start with im but it’s NOT graceful.

As a person who at 21 is still growing up I can attest to this, and I feel like I need to attest to this.

Here’s why:

I graduated in June, looked for jobs over the summer, and was offered a job (at my dream company) literally on the first day of September (it was a Thursday) ((idk why that matters)). For those looking in, that means my life is literally right on track. My t’s are crossed, my eyes are dotted. I’m basically a perfect example of a successful transition from student to fully-functioning young adult professional.

I guess this is all partially accurate. I have done things the way you’re “supposed to”. I have been lucky enough to move on to the next stage of my life quickly and relatively easily.

Check and check and check and check.

But despite all these perfectly crossed t’s and beautifully dotted i’s, I have certainly not as they say “grown up gracefully”.

Exhibit A:

-immediately following graduation in June, I decided not to begin looking for a job as I should have and as I, a shiny new graduate, was “supposed to.” No. I instead decided to have what I called my “Neverland summer” as in I am never growing up. As in I was going to-for-four-months be Peter Pan.

Exhibit B:

-As part of this, I went back to my summer job as a student. I worked at a strawberry farm selling wine, with people I thought were my best friends. Except it wasn’t fun anymore. I didn’t have anything in common with my much younger co-workers. Friendships that had once been my most solid foundation, my summer-job-bragging-right, quickly deteriorated, and with them, so did the only thing that made working a tedious, menial job tolerable.

And Honestly? That was brutal. I lost my friends. I lost my lifestyle and I lost the summer I’d been planning and wishing for the entire school year. I didn’t take any of that very well.

Not very graceful eh?

    Exhibit C:

-After this summer demise, I spent the rest of the summer looking for jobs, not hearing back and getting extremely discouraged. This is turn led to sleeping all day, Netflix binges and all around misery.

                NOT SO GRACEFUL EH?

Luckily before things were too far gone, I got that call. The one that told me I had an interview in a few days. The one that had the potential (not to be dramatic) but the potential to change my life, and it has.

I now work 9-5 five days a week. I commute with what seems to be everyone else on the freaking planet, and spend my down time doing errands, prepping meals for the week or doing other boring things that adults do, or should do, or whatever. Still, I wouldn’t say I’ve entered this new part of my life gracefully.

For one thing, I’m tired all the freaking time, like more tired than I ever thought possible. For another, I honked at a lady today for putting on lipstick at a red light (and almost gave her the finger too). I was once a very polite friendly driver. For another another, I haven’t been to a bar in two weeks (that’s a long time okay?). And in fact, I’m not really sure how to have an adult social life at all. Like what do adults even do for fun? Laundry???

Now, in case you’re reading this and still thinking I sound like I’m not adjusting too badly, I’d like to take a moment to tell you that I am and I’m not. I’d like to tell you that I finished my fourth day of work today and I came home excited to see my boyfriend and my rabbit, but also that my head was fucking killing me after being at work all day.

I’d like to tell you that I’m on the verge of a meltdown because I have to go to bed in like ten minutes and haven’t finished watching my show (which I will now have to pause and finish watching tomorrow after work which is basically like 500 years from now), but also that I’m kind of really excited to see what I get to work on tomorrow at the office.

Finally, I’d like to tell you that I’m not putting into words everything I’m feeling because there’s a chance my boss is reading this. However, I’d also like to tell you that despite all the doubt, the bitter-sweetness and whatever else I’m feeling about beginning this new (and seemingly never-ending) phase of life, I’m really really really grateful to have the opportunity to be where I am, to work where I do, to have the co-workers I do, and that I’m so excited for what’s next as a media production assistant at my new company.

Still though, growing up is hard, change is hard, and transition is really really fucking hard.

I know these things, you know these things, but as a seemingly functioning adult, I feel like it’s my duty to reiterate them, to tell you that no matter how graceful it looks on the outside, there’s nothing graceful about growing up, not at 5,6,7,8,9, not at 12, and definitely not at 21.

Precarity & Reality

I’ve spent a lot of time lately looking at blank pages. I honestly just haven’t known what to say and when I did, I had no idea how to say it.

My life is a tumultuous mess right now. I guess that’s how I’ll say it, what I’ll call the state of things for right now. That’s accurate enough. See, everything is on the edge of something happening. Everything is precarious, yet also a non-starter.

My boyfriend is here, but temporarily, and neither of us have any idea what the future looks like for him or for us.

My dream job is still deciding, but I know deep down no matter how much I “killed it” the chances are I probably won’t get it. (Meaning I’ll be back to the soul destroying experience of job-hunting, and also not be getting to opportunity to do something I love and something that  would be a perfect fit).

Being unemployed and living at home, I’m stuck helping my dad at his company and slowly watching our relationship crumble because of it. (Never work for family, just don’t do it friends).

I’m just feeling like precarity and tumulty squared.  That’s my existence right now. That’s my reality of late.

 

 

 

Writer’s Block

I’ve cried at my computer screen more than a thousand times. I’ve let my heart bleed into the keys, put everything I was thinking, feeling or just needed to say, into flat words displayed as pixels on a screen. But for the first time, maybe ever, I haven’t been able to do this.

Everything I type feels wrong. Everything I want to say get’s lost, and whatever I’ve written seems to get backspaced away. For most people this wouldn’t be a big deal, but for me it feels like the end of the world. See, I don’t know who I am if I can’t write. I don’t know how to be, how to understand myself, the world, or really anything. And right now I need to, maybe more than I ever have.

I guess one psychoanalytic answer to this is that I can’t write because I can’t bear to face myself right now, or my situation. That not letting the words come out is my subconscious putting a blockade in front of the things that right now, I just really can’t deal with. But I need to write. I need to write the way most people need to breathe and I don’t know how to handle the fact that right now I just can’t seem to.

So please, if you’re reading this, if you have any answers, any suggestions, any ideas to get my voice back let me know. Because I’m really dying over here.

Love,

Hannah