9 Months

I graduated one year ago and hit the ground running. Hard. At the end of July in my last Auburn summer, I stacked boxes to the ceiling of my mom’s minivan and hauled my life to Nashville. Within 2 weeks I had a job, 3 months got fired, hired at a new job, started a small business, found a place to live, moved, made friends, grew apart, made new ones, worked with a management company, record label, cried, laughed, and cried again. I never stopped to take a breath- to look around and acknowledge my place in this new post college piece of life.

Until the other day when I did stop. I finally breathed and looked around at this world that was too big for someone who felt suddenly so small. All the hustle and running lead me to a dramatic pause on a blacktop embankment where I sat watching a barge creep down the Cumberland River, asphalt crumbling beneath my kicking feet. The sun burned the right side of my face, and I shoved my discount RayBans up with my middle finger, only to have them defiantly slide back down over my tears.

In the world of adults, I am a child. Frustrated, I cried and threw chunks of asphalt into the brush guarding the riverbank because I realized adulthood is real and not a myth, and I didn’t understand the rules. I didn’t want to.

Friends, love, relationships…..the art of getting by. They all mean something different here.

But I’ve decided different isn’t necessarily bad. I just needed a good cry. Then I picked myself up, brushed the dirt off my damp jeans, and drove home to a roommate who cooked me dinner; I bent over laughing in Kroger as a dog ran through the store searching for his owner and again later as that happy sound filled my house.

I’ll take the tough days alongside the beautiful ones, with perfect little moments sprinkled in between- moments where friends and love are close and the same and on a grassy knoll in a quiet park I feel the dew mix with the stars and listen to my friend smile through the phone, sipping green tea at midnight.