When Harry Met Chelsea...

9:15pm. My Apartment in Poughkeepsie.

I watch “When Harry Met Sally” with my best friend at least once a week. The two of us can practically recite the whole thing from beginning to end. This past week we were watching this particularly relevant scene: about halfway through the film, Harry yells at his two close friends, Marie and Jess, a couple just about to move in together, he says to them, “Right now everything is great, everyone is happy, everyone is in love, but you’ve got to know, that sooner or later, you're going to be screaming at each other about who's going to get this dish (holds up a dish and points to it). This eight-dollar dish will cost you a thousand dollars in phone calls to the legal firm of that's-mine-this-is-yours.”

Harry didn’t actually mean to blow up at his friends, he’d recently divorced his wife of six years and then run into her and her new lover in a toy store. Harry was upset and he took it out on someone else when they totally didn’t deserve it. Now, I don’t know about everybody else, but this sort of behavior is definitely my M.O. I get upset about something and then take out my hurt, or anger, or sadness, or frustration on someone else for something that doesn’t really matter. And, if we're getting real honest here I’ve been doing it a lot lately.

I guess it’s good to know that you have a tendency to do irrational things but, frankly, that’s only valuable information insofar as it helps you figure out why you do irrational things and then helps you to stop doing them. That’s the real question of the week – why? Why do I do this? I think it’s because when I struggle, I think having everyone struggle with me will make things easier. It’s an ugly realization, but it’s true. Now, in this particular time and space, I believe I am experiencing some growing pains. I hope that I am always aware and always growing, but realistically I think I go in cycles, and I have periods of exponential growth that can be particularly challenging. The trick, I’m finding, is to recognize the feelings, the challenges, define them and then (this is the tough part) acknowledge and deal with them instead of turning into Harry and letting the hurt, anger, sadness, frustration, or whatever have it’s way with the people around me.

This is all starting to sound very much like a therapy session but that’s not what I want to put across really. I’m not a psychologist, I’m just another person you might pass on the street trying to put my heart on my sleeve. Trying to be real and honest with myself and with everyone else. What I am trying to say is that lately feeling angry, sad, hurt and so on has been an opportunity to attempt to be a better version of myself if I choose to take it.  I’m not saying I always do, I turn into Harry often. I make so many mistakes. But that’s the lesson, that’s the point; I can be better, I have so many opportunities. And that is what Harry meant: If you’re not careful, the second everything stops being happy and lovely in your life you’ll make it about something stupid like a dish and it will end up costing you way more than the thing is worth, it’s much better (though it might be more difficult) to just deal with whatever it is you’re feeling that isn’t so happy or lovely.

Ultimately, I will have to deal with myself either way because I can’t run from me. This is my work. This is my opportunity. And I don’t think I’m alone in it.

On Frisbee and Judgement

1:57am. My Apartment in Poughkeepsie.

I was never really a sports kid growing up so my knowledge of sports in general is highly limited. Sure, I did some summer swim team and little kid t-ball but that’s about it. High school was totally devoid of sports. My parents don’t watch sports on TV and never really taught me that sports had any kind of value. That being said, ever since I got to college I’ve had far more interaction with sports than I ever did previously. Now, in this time of constant reflection, I realize that maybe I missed out.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to play in a women’s Frisbee tournament in New Jersey with a lovely group of women from Marist and SUNY New Paltz. I’ve never played women’s Frisbee before and it was an interesting first experience. We got to the field around 11am and met the girls from New Paltz. Introductions were short and game play quickly got underway, within a few points though each of us had a fitting position on the field and we all began to work as a team. Now, I’m not trying to tell some super emotional Remember the Titans tale here, all I’m saying is that for me, the kid who grew up thinking sports were just silly games with no serious value, it was a new lesson. Sports are so much more than silly games – it’s learning how to be part of a team, it’s finding your best value rather than just doing what you want to do, it’s hard work, it’s sacrifice, it’s losing with your head held high and winning with the knowledge that none of us really does anything alone.

And while I may have turned up my nose at sports way back when, this has been a lesson I’ve been learning since I started college. Don’t ever get too attached to the idea that you know something because life could change your mind. And maybe this is a great thing, maybe the most boring people on earth are the ones who decide to stop learning, the ones who never eat a slice of humble pie, the people that never change.

It’s interesting the way all the different aspects of my life seem to influence and correspond to one another. I went home after the Frisbee tournament and sat in my bedroom for a while staring up at my collage of things from Italy that hangs above my bed. I remembered how I told myself going to Italy would never change me… but it did. I remember saying to myself back in high school, sports are just silly games… but now they aren’t. This week’s life lesson probably isn’t even about sports; it’s probably more about being too quick to judge something and then changing my mind. I won’t lie, I’m a person who has a tendency towards these types of judgments but I don’t think I’m alone and that’s why I’m writing. Whether it’s a Frisbee or a trip to Italy, life changes your mind sometimes and currently I’m learning to just let it do so.

The Difficult Part

3:55pm. My Apartment in Poughkeepsie.

It’s been a long week to say the least. I recently reconnected with a friend I made back in Florence. He’s a special person and it was a welcome pleasure to once again hop on a train and head off somewhere for an adventure. This adventure brought me to Brooklyn (I warned you all that it would not be too exciting). My friend and I got to talking about how life has been getting back from Italy. He spoke at length about tying up loose ends. He told me that after coming back from Italy, he thought he’d hit the ground running and have all sorts of new experience to help him along the way. It didn’t quite work out the way he planned. He got home and realized that all the things he’d left behind were still there and without realizing, he’d left so much of his life open ended, so many things unexamined. And now he had to stop running off ahead and, in his most eloquent words, “clean that shit up.”

I have similar feelings. I never expected to change (which was naïve in and of itself, and now I have to come to terms with the idea that I am at times, naïve). However, I changed, I couldn’t deny it, I was still the same me but I had new ideas as to how I would put that into the world. That’s where it got tough. Coming back to the United States meant being a whole lot more honest with the people I love about who I was, about what I was feeling. And some relationships stood up to this, others I’ve had to let go and many are still a work in progress. At least it’s out there though.

So what’s the lesson here? What do this story and all these discombobulated messages mean? These are the questions I’m asking myself (and apparently I’m not alone). Maybe, there isn’t a glaring explanation for why these things happen, why they affect you the way that they do, or why they have to happen now. Maybe none of those things matter. Maybe what matters is not why but how you take life’s punches as they come. I guess (for this week at least) it’s about tying up the loose ends even though it’s so hard. My mom said to me over winter break, “Chelsea, you can’t expect to go through life and not get hurt and not hurt anybody. Life is not a painless thing, or at least a good life isn’t.” My mom was so right, and so was my friend. I imagine it doesn’t always happen this way for everyone. Some people are so prepared for the way new experiences will affect them and they really do just hit the ground running (these people, as you might imagine, are so annoying). In this instance though, I was and still am, the other kind of person. These new experiences have knocked me to the ground and sometimes that means that you can’t just get up, shake it off and move on without getting hurt. Sometimes you’ve got to stop trying so hard to move on and take time to examine your life, your lessons, your relationships – and then comes the difficult part… “Clean that shit up.”

A Return to Normalcy

My Apartment in Poughkeepsie. 2:03AM.

            Ever since returning from Italy I’ve felt the very real void that was once filled with Sunday afternoon latte drinking and blog writing. As nice as it was, I knew it would end at some point and I was prepared for that. However, I was not prepared for the loss I would feel leaving my travel blog behind. I still have thoughts to share. I still have feelings to process. So, even though the lattes here pale in comparison to the ones in Italy, I guess I’ll just have to keep on writing. I can’t promise my life here in Poughkeepsie will be nearly as exciting as it was gallivanting around Europe but as long as there are lessons to be learned I’ll be writing about them and as long as there are thoughts to share…I’ll share.

            The truth is they tell you very little as to how you will react when you come back from being abroad. Certainly, it has been a whirlwind experience for me. I never anticipated the deep affect this experience would have on me, my whole outlook changed. Mid fall semester I found myself at a crossroads, a piazza if you will, and I dared to step forward, to take a new road. Or at least I thought it was that way.

            I don’t quite know that life works this way. Coming home brings a whole slew of new decisions to make, it’s like driving on a highway and there’s a new exit road with a million possibilities every five minutes that you have to choose whether or not to take. It gets exhausting. I’m guessing that this is the process of figuring out how deeply you want the experience of being abroad to affect the experience of the rest of your life. It’s tough work. Which relationships, habits, preferences etc. do you choose to maintain? Which do you let go? How much are you willing to let go? How hard are you willing to work? These are all questions I’m asking myself on a daily basis and that doesn’t even cover the issue of holding on to the experiences of Italy in a meaningful way. How do you keep those lessons close to your heart?

            Even after all of that, if I could possibly sort out this plethora of questions, I realize something that I imagine I could only come to in exactly the time and space that I did – this process, it never ends. This is the cycle of having life experiences and then moving forward while at the same time holding on to what you learn in the process. It never ends.  So that’s where I’m at this week. These are the pervasive thoughts and I guess it’s exactly the place I have to be.