Ten years ago, I was a senior in high school, about to enter my last semester. I hadn’t chosen what college I was going to attend next fall. I was deep in senioritis and dreaming of a Boy Meets World-like proposal at my high school graduation in a few months. I wonder if I’d even recognize myself.
On the last day of the decade here’s my round-up:
- I graduated high school with honors and gave the class president speech at graduation
- I moved across the country on my own to attend Emerson College and found ‘my people’ for the first time in my life
- My friend and I started the first Emerson College Yule Ball put on by the Residence Hall Association that continued for many years
- I was in a four and a half year long-distance relationship with my high school sweetheart
- I got engaged to that sweetheart on the Brooklyn bridge in 2011, a few days before my nineteenth birthday
- I studied abroad in the Netherlands in a literal castle for three months and traveled all around Europe
- I was a Resident Assistant for two years at Emerson and loved it
- I discovered I was very much bisexual
- I ran my first half-marathon during my junior year of college
- I went through a major depression for the second time in my life during my senior year, breaking a seven-year streak of not hurting myself, but figuring out that therapy was actually a very good thing after all and have since become a major advocate
- I moved with my fiance to Austin, TX and got my first real job. A company I still work for today (for five and a half years!)
- I transitioned roles from sales/marketing into human resources and built my own department
- I got married at my favorite place in Door County
- I was deeply unhappy, experiencing the most intense depression of my life
- My marriage quickly and irrevocably fell apart. I left, got divorced, and have spent the latter part of the decade clearing out the debris of that ten-year relationship.
- I lived truly alone for the first time in my life and have now done so for four years
- I reconciled my complicated feelings for my college friends, who I love deeply, but didn’t understand how to love them so deeply and not be with them in the way I had imagined until, at last, I did understand
- I flirted with alcoholism for a couple of years. I don’t mean that lightly. It kept me up and shaking. But eventually, I could stand being with myself sober.
- I adopted two perfect, perfect cats
- I went to London and stood at King’s Cross exactly on epilogue day: 11 am September 1st, 2017
- I have gotten seven tattoos
- I have gone to Costa Rica and Hawaii with my family
- I wrote Jack’s story from a short story for writing class to a novella to a novel
- I officiated for my brother’s wedding
- I have been the happiest and saddest and the most confused and certain and all the in-between . . . every powerful emotion in my life has happened in the last ten years
There are many things I’m leaving out. Many things I’m forgetting. Ten years ago I couldn’t have imagined my life now. Seventeen to twenty-seven. I could barely have conceived of a career. I never thought I’d end up living in Texas. Queer stuff wasn’t even on my radar and now it’s all I want to talk about. I didn’t have Lin or Cara in my life. I never thought Carl would be out of it.
I was so beautifully naive about love and what I wanted and now when I recognize that naivety still in myself I want to weep: I thought I’d lost it forever. Things have a way of coming back to us.
But I am ready to put this decade to bed. I’m celebrating with myself tonight — part circumstance and part understanding that I am exactly what I need as the year changes over. That’s a lesson I’ll take away from the past ten years: I love my own company. Life is so much easier when that’s true.
However you’re celebrating, I wish you the most beautiful final hours of this decade. It has been transformative and important. Here’s to the next.
With Love,
Natalie