Nearly eight months ago, I was saying, “I should have never listened to Jimmy Eat World on repeat my senior year of high school… because it makes me feel like this year is supposed to be the year that stands out among the rest.“ And now I’m here on a Monday night, listening to Bon Iver (now that autumn has arrived), trying to make sense of everything that’s happened. 

I feel like I’m reconstructing my life from scratch. New friends. New job (or same job, different city). New plans. New relationships? Everyone keeps saying, “You have plenty of time to get it all sorted. We’re still young.” Yet I feel so behind. I wouldn’t say I worked hard to obtain my degree, because let’s face it… my school days were usually spent at Int’l with Mindy or trapped in a Mac lab keeping tabs on my social outlets via the interwebs. Regardless, I secured my degree as I had set out to do, but I almost want nothing to do with it. What I want is to take a loan from my nonexistent money tree and use it to roam the streets of Paris, learn the French language, drink wine and be fabulously desolate. 

Hello, quarter-life crisis. 

Not to mention, I feel like some east Asian country stole the potential love of my life from right under me. I’m making heaps and heaps of plans to stay busy to keep my mind off things I don’t want to think about. I’ve consumed my weekends and now weekdays with drinking far too many pints of Allagash and Bellinitinis to force fun and temporary oblivion into my life. I’m picking petty altercations on Skype because I’m feeling jealous and insignificant. Excuse the glass-half-empty bullshit, but I do feel emotionally drained. 

My escape to Tampa was utterly fantastic though. It’s always nice to go back to a place and people and realize that things are still the same. Visiting Citrus, strolling down the beach in Clearwater in the middle of the night, laughing ‘til my sides ached. I missed it. I stayed up ‘til 6 in the morning talking to an old acquaintance slash friend about love and relationships. There we were, laying on an inflating air mattress, telling each other things we wouldn’t tell anyone else because it was understood that it was to be kept schtum - he with his fear of commitment and me with my constant worry of how things will ultimately pan out. It was the most honest conversation I’ve had in a long time. Truthfully speaking, we probably won’t ever speak to each other ever again - but sometimes it’s just nice to have company, and to have that sort of outlet. Maybe that’s part of the reason I decided to start writing again. 

Either way, I came back here and things are back to being the same. I can’t believe I’m about to be 24 and it seems like this whole year went to waste. I need to get it together or I’ll be a 30-year old retail slave who still lives with her parents. Do not want.