Falling for My Own PR

I graduated college 9 months ago. I walked across the stage adorned in the cap and gown, thinking the degree I held in my hands would provide indisputable clarity and a concrete path to my life.

Unfortunately, it did not.

I used to think I knew the life I wanted, but that was one of comfort, stability, and security. It was a cookie-cutter template of a million people before me - neatly cut and predictably sewn.

Sometime between now and then, I realized that the life I thought I wanted became far different from the life that makes my soul come alive. What I thought I needed, I had outgrown.

Since then…

I read Dolly Aderton’s “Everything I Know about Love” in a cramped London cafe.

I landed a job at a marketing agency through an answered prayer.

I drove 394 miles to LA, just to clam up and close myself off from the one person who has truly held my heart.

I spend a cold October night talking to the kindest girl from Germany, who left her everything and everyone she knew to experience San Francisco.

I watched a fashion show unfold in the empty corners of an abandoned city loft.

I also watched the only person I’ve ever loved get up and make everything he wanted become a reality. I watched him overstuff cardboard boxes and battered luggage with everything he owned to see cities he spoke of on our first date.

I bought plane tickets and filled gas tanks to see him.

I filled pages in my journal with hurried words and clasped my hands in fervent prayer.

I write poetry now. And I speak my truth, not the one I think people want to hear, but the one I’ve always been afraid to say aloud.

My interactions no longer bend to the weight of how I am perceived.

Apparently, life is not a script written by others’ expectations. I’m stunned by the truth that you can chase your own path. I always thought this was a well-worn sentiment we’re told as children to fill the spaces between our dreams.

But it’s real.

You can truly become anything, and nothing is more surprising than realizing the life you want is the one you can choose.

I’m inspired by the lives of people I didn’t meet by chance —people who wear their confidence like a second skin, whose sense of self feels both untouchable and magnetic.

So, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m 22 years old and all I truly know is that I want to see the world, I’m still learning how to love, I need God, and I don’t know where I’ll be in 1 year. And I think that’s beautiful.