alexis in the city

i wrote this almost three years ago, as i was preparing to move from Italy back to the states. i came across it as i was cleaning out files on my computer and surprisingly found it somewhat good after all these years.  so i’m positing it with out any editing and re-writing. who knows, it may be a good place to use as a spring board for the stories that have followed …

If I’d known a year ago, that looking at my planner from my last year in college would make me cry, I probably would have laughed. I’ve always been one to yes, carry my happy memories fondly with me, but to move on. To accept what’s in front of me and work through it. But in the last nine months there had been a lot to accept. I came across my day timer from college as I was cleaning my new apartment out, getting ready to move again. I had hardly used it since I graduated. Brought it with me when I got married, but stashed it in a drawer. Each date on every page was, to me, filled with who I used to be. Meetings with professors, homework assignments, lunches with friends, outings with roommates. Even meaningless things like “pay rent,” or , “do laundry,” or “meet kelli to work out” brought tears to my eyes. They reminded me of the person I was, the person I felt like I still wanted to be, but had left behind. I saw names I’d forgotten, events that had freeze-framed in my mind, outings that had all but faded from my memory. Torrey conference, midnight madenss, pumpkin carving party, girls’ dinner. They didn’t really mean anything to any one else, but to me they were footprints of myself. I reached out to the pages of the stupid, thin notebook as if I reached back to my own personality. It was a weird, surreal feeling. Like I was looking through someone else’s life, but having the memories and experiences to back up what I was seeing.

I don’t know if I would say I’d changed so much since that last year that I was a totally different person—I didn’t feel like a different person. I felt like the same girl, but she had experienced, sometimes endured, a thousand circumstances to bring her so far from where she was that it was crazy to really look back on what had been. Each day, pieces of the memories I now held in their tangible form had come back to me. I thought frequently of my old roommates, fun parties we went to, crazy class schedules. I had many fond, and probably an equal number of painful, memories. But somehow, nine months later, standing there beside the kitchen table in my Italian apartment, flipping through a ten dollar calendar, I got a weird rush of emotion. I was at a completely different stage in my life now, *and* I was getting ready to move on from*that* stage into something else! I hadn’t even had a chance to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t the day-timer girl anymore. Somehow, over the course of almost a year, I *had* become a different person—things going on around me had forced me into it. Sure, I’d obviously chosen to get married, but I didn’t choose the events that came with it … I had no way of seeing those events from where I was standing when I said, “I do.” So here I was all those months later, holding day-timer girl in my hands, waiting to be finally-has-a-job-and-lives-in-the-states-again girl. But who was I now, who had I been up until now?

You know, I don’t know. I don’t know where “college me” became “married me;” I don’t know where or how “married me” will become “career me.” I figure it’s quite possible that it’s not so much a thing of becoming one thing or another, but more a thing of being. I was and I am and I will be me—a year ago that “me” hadn’t experienced marriage, and in a year I’ll have yet another set of accomplishments under my belt. I didn’t leave day timer girl, or “college me” behind … I grew *from* them. Not necessarily *away* from or even *out* of them. They are still a part of me. A part that makes me happy, and sad, and nostalgic. But I’m learning not to regret growing from them, but seeing that growth as another stage in life.

It’s like one of my favorite bands says:

You left before I had a chance to say goodbye

But that’s the way life usually is, it just passes you by

But you can’t hold on to regrets and you can’t look back

So I’ll just be thankful for the times that I had with you