Good things are Coming

My dad called me this morning. He's in L.A. He told me where he was staying and what he was doing, and it made me imagine exactly in my mind what everything looked like. I got incredibly homesick, but instead of being sad about it, I started writing an entry in my memoir about my L.A. adventure, and it started with my old job.

As I was writing about my old counseling job, I started laughing about it. Maybe when you're going through a dark period in life, when you're broke and people are mistreating you and your work is so miserable that it's all-consuming, you don't see the humor in it. Well, I'm far enough removed now that I could NOT STOP LAUGHING at how bat-sheet crazy my work was. I mean really. What 24 year old recovering Baptist from Memphis winds up working in forensic counseling with 50+ year old B-listers and trans clients and sitting in on their divorce trials at the L.A. County Courthouse? Just thinking about some of the blatant insanity that I dealt with made me have full-fledged belly roll laughs.

I guess sometimes I don't realize how intensely ridiculous a situation is until I think back on it and consider the circumstances. I started thinking about some of my clients and the situations I dealt with and how, considering my sheltered and very protected upbringing, I thought about and dealt with these situations. Hilarious.

When I talked to my dad this morning and he told me he ate at In-N-Out Burger, I said, "You know, I was so destitute and fed up with L.A. when I left, I never foresaw me missing it this much, but every single day, I really, really miss it." And he said, in such a practical way, "Well, you never know. Maybe you'll move back." and for some reason, that gave a lot of relief. I don't know that I'll ever move back there, because being poor really sucks, and I don't foresee myself being able to have a decent middle class lifestyle in L.A. without being extremely rich for Southern standards. But what I recognize about myself is that I lock myself into picking choice A or B, deciding that if I choose one thing that I'll have to take everything that comes with it...But that just isn't so.

When my parents met, my mom was in Baton Rouge and my dad was in Memphis. She didn't know she'd be moving to Memphis and leaving everything that brought her down, but that's what happened. All she did was take a chance by trusting my dad, and with that leap of faith, she was able to embrace the adventure of a lifetime.

I have been doing SO MUCH BETTER than I did at first. I don't feel depressed and regretful like I did at first, but I still cling onto this desire for adventure, this hope that maybe I'll be able to pack up all of my crap once and for all and finally find somewhere in life that feels like "home," whatever that is, if it even exists. I look forward to finally doing away with all of the cardboard boxes, and being able to have all of my life in one place. I'm not sure if this sense of "home" is something that I've just made up in my head, but I think that there's something to it. I don't think it's necessarily a geographic location - I think that having that sense of home is when you feel like your little place in the world is yours- you fit there and you can make it your safe place where you can really be yourself after you've been beat up by your day. It's a place where you can proudly display what's important to you- your pictures and knick knacks from travels and degrees and paintings. It's a reflection of your heart. That's what I think it is. And I think I'm on the verge of finding my "home."

I think finding peace within myself is probably the first step, and knowing me, I'll never 100% attain that peace, because I don't think that I'm one of those zen types of people who accepts life as it comes. I always try to make it better, which is one of my best and worst traits... Anyway, despite this, I know that if I am more cognizant of having an attitude of acceptance, it'll be a heck of a lot easier for me to maintain peace than if I just let my own human nature rule my day, and I think that I'm getting there. That makes me happy.

I'm excited about things that are coming down the pike, even though I have no plan and I have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. I think that this is going to be a big year. I think that, despite the uncertainty and ups and downs and shaky ground, that good things are coming, and right now, I just have to make myself ready for them.

I'm still going to be irritated with the obnoxious yuppies with whom I constantly interact. I'm still going to want to sock people who try to cram their unrealistic and shallow cultural views down my throat. I'm still going to roll my eyes when people try to make my life as small as theirs. But I am also going to try really hard to remember peace and acceptance and to see that all of these little fractions of pictures, will, eventually, become one big mosaic of my life, and it's happening every second. Time to embrace today and look back at all of the INSANITY and belly-roll laugh at it. It feels good.