Eastern call.

It’s been a while, I know. Things here are hard. And different. And hard. And different. And did I mention hard? Life is new and unfamiliar, my footing is shaky and uncertain, my surroundings are foreign, but not all together unfriendly. It is very much the adventure I signed up for, which is simultaneously gratifying and terrifying. What happens when you get everything you wanted and it turns out to be nothing you expected?

I stopped returning emails and reading your blogs and checking facebook and answering telephone calls in any sort of timely manner (if at all) because it reminds me too much of what I left behind. That sounds dramatic and I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, but it’s sort like that first time you went away to summer camp and realized how to cope on your own and somehow talking to your parents actually made it worse. Made the missing more acute. The reminders of how things used to be are too much, lately. I can’t be mentally there and physically here and so I choose the only thing I can. I choose here.

The thing is, this space was born and struggled and thrived back there. And so many of you were there. Offering encouragement, lifting me up, convincing me I was big enough and strong enough and good enough to endure the tough shit. You helped me arrange the pieces back together, to form a better woman - more resilient and courageous and unbreakable than I ever thought possible. But that was Heartbreak and this is Real Life and somehow I feel like I should instinctively already know how to make it better. How to cope and survive in a new city. And I’m trying. And failing. And trying harder.

Sometimes it feels like I’m in this unfamiliar ocean wearing ill-fitting arm floaties with leaky valves and I’m kicking and treading and coughing a little and some days, I just want that fucking Navy chopper to stir up the water and throw down the rope and take me home already. Take me back to Simple and Easy. Some days I want that and I suppose that’s normal. It takes time, people keep saying, as if this sort of advice is in any way helpful or remarkable.

There’s also this piece - this show behind the curtain - this illusion I want to show you that THINGS ARE AMAZING HERE! And lots of times, they are. My job is to market beer. I MEAN, RIGHT? I get paid good money to drink good beer. THE JOKE IS SURELY ON SOMEONE, NOT ME! And I drive around all these fantastic East Coast cities and meet incredible people and host cool events and this is my life and it’s amazing. And then I come home and it’s dark and quiet and it’s just me and my two-beer buzz eating single serve microwave popcorn on the floor holding my computer up to the window like a 1999 flip phone trying to steal my neighbor’s wireless internet. On Twitter, from 1,000 miles away, life is good and the only way you would know otherwise is if you get me on the telephone and ask me what I miss most about Minnesota. This is the trigger point when I will predicatively fall apart into an ugly, sobbing mess. To voicemail you go, my friends.

... Sometimes we choose life’s tests. We gut our bellies by our own hand and we heal or we don’t. We sink or we swim. We quit or we endure. It all feels extremely black and white right now, because everything feels abnormally huge when your footprint in a new town is no larger than a dot on a map or an inconsequential pushpin. No one said it would be easy. I know I never said those words, but I never knew it would be so hard, either.

Holly Go Nightly: The Leveling

I read this last night, my head nodding up and down at every word like a bobber in the water and my heart squeezing and hurting for where Holly is. When I think back to camp or moving up north (both way back when and only a little while ago), I always get this visual of sliding into the cab of an old rickety truck stuck on an old logging trail in the middle of the woods. The road's not that great, but you know you've got to just keep your eyes straight ahead and drive forward.

And she's right: Sometimes, the fact that you chose the adventure makes finding it a not-too-altogether-happy one even harder. I always wanna be the brave soul. The one who casts out and then shouts to shore, "Look! This is even better than I told you it was gonna be!" And when it's really not, even if it's due to things that have nothing to do with you, it feels personal. Like you should have known that this wasn't going to be all awesome balls covered with the fudge of constant good times. You should have expected this, silly girl.

The biggest thing I learned, I think, is that, when you've struck out to a new place that is wholly and totally without friends, you really do get to know yourself better. The true value of your company. I remember standing in the back of a room at camp one night, wanting to shout, "You know, there are people who really do think that I'm cool!" It can be upsetting and yet freeing. A litmus test to how much of you is you, and how much is an identity you've created through your friends. This is the thing that most people figure out when they go to college. This is the thing that I still have to figure out, every time I move and make or lose friends. And while it might be a worthy thing, ideally, the experience of grappling with who you are when no one you know is around is still a lonely and quiet one.

But here's what I also love about this, and Holly - if you haven't caught on yet, reading this will show you that she is fucking brave and amazing. Independent. A goddamn woman. She's the kind of girl you write a movie about, starring Julia Roberts, a ridiculously amazing farmhouse, and a really great pair of boots. I want her to write a book about her adventures - or let me write a book based on what I think her adventures should be (please see movie idea above) - and this is what makes it that. The grit of it, the hardscrabble honesty. And right now I know that reading blogs and catching up on Facebook and calling and emailing feels a little like looking in the mirror after leaving The Labyrinth, but when it gets hard, we are here to help.

And if we need to fly out there to help you drink your $300 worth of beer, then that's the kind of sacrifice we're willing to make. But only for you.[image error]