Dear Me, One Year Ago,

You have no idea what you’re in for. Right now you are in Budapest with three of your favorite human beings, halfway through one of the best trips of your life. You know that in less than two weeks you’ll be back in Boston and things are going to be awkward and weird and strange and it’s going to take a lot of getting used to.

But what you don’t yet realize is how much things have changed and how hard it’s going to be and that just because you’re back in Boston doesn’t mean that everything is suddenly going to be okay.

In fact, it’s going to kind of suck for a while.

You’re going to be scared of commitment. And large grocery stores. And interacting with old friends, because maybe they won’t understand how you’ve changed and what has happened in the past year (and how could they when you barely understand it yourself?)

You’re going to hate the public transit system in Boston. And your retail job. And the thought of being stuck in one place for an extended period of time. And anything that even remotely resembles permanence.

And you’re going to write in your journal, and vent to your sister, and think you’re going crazy, and cry, and be filled with an inexplicable rage, and watch too much Netflix, and mourn the loss of your transitory nomadic life.

But then slowly things will get better.

You’ll get a better job. You’ll form new connections with old friends and new connections with new friends. You’ll take online classes. You’ll travel in the U.S. You’ll start reading, and writing, and taking pictures again. You’ll start making plans. Your brain will settle down a bit, and things won’t seem quite so all-or-nothing-end-of-the-world. You’ll make peace with your year in Germany, and the guilt and anger will finally leave.

And you’ll realize that you still don’t know what you’re doing, and you still don’t know what you want.

So you’ll move on to the next thing, and it might be wonderful, and it might be terrible, but either way it’s okay because at least you are trying and day dreaming and living, and in the end it will just be another adventure.