Since the rest really shouldn't be unwritten...

For years I kept a livejournal. I documented my life several times a week, at least several times a month, and when I go to read it now, I can remember most every single little thing I put in there, even if it was nearly eight years ago now (Jesus, the fact that I could do anything almost a decade ago means that I'm not a kid anymore). However, the past few years it has fallen into a state of pitiful neglect.  This saddens me, yet every attempt to "renew the livejournal once more!" seems to fall short - I feel like simply resuming after a 2 year gap, especially one as eventful as my last two years have been, would be... tacky, I guess.  So here's my solution : start over.  In a way, I've started over in my life, I've rerouted things to get them back on track to where I want to be, and it seems like now would finally be the right time to start up the blogging again.  So here we are.

One of the reasons I couldn't start my LJ up again was that I felt like I'd need to put in some sort of colossal summary of the gap up.  That undertaking would be nearly impossible, so I simply let the LJ rot instead.  This fresh new start overcomes the need for a complete summary, but some sort of explanation of how my life got to this point is definitely called for.  Where to start though?

I'll start right here. I'm sitting on my front porch, in North Carolina, writing this.  I packed up my life and moved across the country to go to pharmacy school.

I decided somewhere in the middle of sophomore year of  college that I no longer wanted to be a doctor.  That was a bit of an uneducated decision really, influenced by my desire to help people and my obsession with grey's anatomy.  I realized somewhere in that semester that I was done with the cut-throat competition (not that I couldn't hack it of course *wink*, I was just done with the person it made me and the toll it took on my body, my mind, my emotions), I didn't want to hate myself through grad school, I didn't want to put off having kids and a family until I was 30, I didn't want to miss Christmas morning with those some-day kids.  My explorations led me to pharmacy, a slight tweak on my career plan that seemed to jive MUCH better with everything I wanted.  The more people I told about my interest in pharmacy, the more people I discovered were or knew pharmacists, and I heard nothing but RAVES (I encountered more than one "you'd better be sure" from doctors in response to my desire to head towards med). So here I am - only a month in, granted, but loving it, and surrounded by people who are loving it too.

As far as the North Carolina thing goes - I knew I needed to get out of state, for reasons that will be enumerated later, and this was my best option.  I'm at one of the best schools in the country, people are generally kinder here I've found, and it is absolutely gorgeous.  Really, something inside of me told me that this was where I needed to be to live the kind of life I wanted to live.  I'm sure I'll rave more about that later... every day I'm in awe over how beautiful it is here.  I literally want to grab people by the shoulders and shake them and sat "Do you realize you get to live in this EVERY DAY???"  Especially the kids on campus.  I love UofA, but it's not what I'd call beautiful... even if it was, it wouldn't touch UNC.  I drove past a complex of dorms this morning (the best equivalent at UofA would be highland), and I was so stunned I almost slammed on my brakes.  I'm driving back ASAP and snapping a picture to share with all of you.  Which presents another danger - I'm really terrified I'm going to drive off the road here.  There are so many beautiful, lush trees around, and cute houses with wraparound white porches and rocking chairs, and it's just breathtaking... I get distracted, which is definitely not a good thing when you've got about a foot of buffer on the side of the road before you hit forest. It sounds funny at first, but I'm legitimately worried that I'll get into some sort of dangerous situation here soon.

There were several reasons I needed to get out of Arizona, one of them being that I simply wanted to see something else.  I rationalized that I couldn't make an educated decision about where I wanted to spend the rest of my life (or at least establish a good chunk of it) without having seen something other than Arizona.

In addition, home just ... isn't anymore.  Physically, my mom completely redid the house right around my sophomore year of college, so that it really looks very little like the home I grew up in.  For the boys, they were there for the transition, but I left home one way, and when I came back it was different.  I was too though, as evidenced by how I feel at home.  I love every member of my family immensely, but I'm obviously not a part of that life anymore.  I could wallow over it, or I could embrace the fact that I was making my own life.  I figured I shouldn't fight fate, and it's not like I disowned my family or anything - I'm just building my own life. 

The family has had some problems lately, that have been a long time developing.  To be honest, one of my biggest fears was that I would come home from college and my family, as I knew it, simply wouldn't be there anymore.  For the little while that I was home this summer, it was confirmed that it was not an irrational fear. There was nothing I could do about the situation, truly - and it only caused me mental and emotional anguish.That's all I want to discuss of it. Steps are being taken to mend the broken bits of my family, and we'll see how those pan out - I really am hoping for the best, and rationally thinking that that's not an unreasonable hope.  Being away from all of that is probably the best thing for ME, and that's who I have to worry about right now. 

About a year ago, my relationship with Kyle ended.  There are such a variety of complex factors that went into that decision that I don't know if I could ever describe it how it should be, but here are the very simple, very basic explanations (I wish to make clear that this is my perspective, my thoughts and reasonings). I spent probably more time than I should have in that relationship because I was never unhappy.  I misinterpreted my lack of unhappiness as an indicator that I was actively happy, and I spun my wheels for a long time.  The fact that I was spinning my wheels in that department hampered me from developing my life overall, something that I just couldn't have.  As we approached the 5 year mark, and a few of our friends were getting married, we had a difficult conversation addressing what everyone wondered - would that be us?  Everyone says you just know, and we figured that if we didn't know by now, well... that probably meant something.  I think there were some things at the foundation of our relationship that weren't right, but we glossed over them and tried to build on a cracked base.  The decision to end it and the ensuing healing process was difficult for both of us. Ultimately, the over-arching problem was that neither of us was right to fill that role in the other person's life, simple as that.  Kyle treated me better than I probably deserved at times, and I'm glad I have the experiences we shared in my life - and this is what's truly best for both of us.  He's in Orlando now, so I didn't move out of AZ to get away from him, but I think we both needed to move away to... shed some of our old skin, is what it feels like.  We needed to leave everything there.

Shortly after Kyle and I broke up, I started seeing Brian.  I was very open about where I was in my life, with my situation, that I didn't want anything serious - I let him know that he was cute and that I had fun with him, and we would take it from there.  I never intended on it turning into a relationship, especially since it was such a short time since my last one.  It did grow into a real relationship though - I think I had emotionally checked out of my prior relationship a while back, and so even though it had officially ended only a little bit ago, there was part of me that had been craving something like this for a while.  From the very start I was open to the point of being blunt with Brian - something he later told me was part of the reason he decided he wanted to pursue this relationship with me (instead of writing me off as too much baggage to acquire just before one graduates from college).  I was very direct about everything that I was feeling (with ALL people involved in my life), and I made it clear that I would do this until I wasn't having fun anymore, and that I would be actively assessing that regularly.  I was out to make sure I did what was best for me again, and despite some resistance on my part, I absolutely fell for him.

However, graduation and our relocations loomed ever nearer ahead.  Many conversations and a lot of thought went into this decision, but ... he's in the living room, 20 feet behind me, right now :)  Here's a condensed nugget of the rationale: he had no other plans, and so he wanted to come with me, provided he could find a job; I asked him to come with me, with the understanding that this guaranteed nothing, that it could very well end in 6 months; we both decided that if it was what made us happy, right now, that we should do it - you more often regret the things you didn't do in life than the ones that you actually do. 
I am incredibly blessed to have him here with me, and I'm thankful that we made the decision that we did.  Not only has he been a tremendous comfort to me during what ended up being a very rough transition, but we've become stronger here, as we're about all we've got.

We're a tiny family out here - Brian, myself, and Monkey :)  My family and I found a cat back home who had been stranded in the godawful heat- he was a teeny tiny little 6-week-old kitty when I found him - really, who could resist that?  He's a goofy little one who keeps us laughing almost all the time.  His favorite things to do are eat triscuits, play in the toilet, and play in boxes (I've gotten rid of most of the ones from unpacking, but he just loves this Amazon.com box I got a book in and a box that used to hold containers of soymilk from Cosco, and I can't just throw them away).

Our little family lives in the condo that my parents helped me buy - that's right, I'm a homeowner!  It really makes me feel like a grown-up to know that I'm a college graduate who has her name on the deed to her home.  Wow.  I've got some pictures of it unfurnished up on google, but I'll take more once I'm all unpacked, cleaned up, and the furniture is all in place (we're about 90% there with all of that...)  It's about 4 miles from school, and the public transportation is awesome here - because a good chunk of it is university funded - so I hop on a bus right outside the entrance to my complex that drops me off right across the street from my building at school.  It's a very nice, convenient situation.

I'll try to post some updates later with snippets of emails and such to friends where I told them about my adventures in adjusting to new life.  For now, I've exhausted my blogging muscles. ~Adieu~

"All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience. "

                        Johann Wolfgang von Goethe