When was the last time you felt weightless?
My quest to discover what makes me happy, and inevitable blunders I ran into on the way
The hot summer sun scorched our backs as we strolled down the boardwalk and onto the Tybee Island public beach. Everything about that day was suffocating: I was with my brother and his friends, and the astute sense of not belonging seemed to follow me everywhere like a dark cloud I couldn’t shake.
It was the summer of 2021, the first “normal-ish” summer after the pandemic, and when Isaac had invited me to come with him and his friends — or had I invited myself? — to Savannah, Georgia, the week after our family trip to Belize, I jumped at the opportunity.
It seemed like a good chance to extend my escape from the reality that awaited me at home, a reality I couldn’t escape: I had turned my back on my dream career, the only future I had ever considered, and I had no idea how to forge forward.
In those initial days of deciding not to go to medical school, I had shunned the fear of what lay ahead as I soaked in my newfound sense of freedom. At the time, there was nothing as intoxicating as a new beginning.
So I enjoyed the fresh spring air as I packed up my things, got final coffees and meals with friends, and loaded a moving van with my dad to go home, making that drive down 81 one final time.
My heart soared the further south we got. I had loved Philadelphia, but my ache for home had never left. My ache for what was familiar.
A profound sense of peace settled over me as I drove my Prius through the familiar low-lying mountains of Virgina and finally over the border into North Carolina, belting out the words to “Wagon Wheel” as I crossed the bridge over the Dan River I had traversed so many times going to and from and to Philly from home.
Everything was different, but everything was the same. And I knew in my heart, in my bones, that I had made the right choice. That was the easy part.
People asked me often in those days what I would do next, followed quickly by reassurances that I had time to figure it out. I was young, they said. I had plenty of time.
I didn’t know how to tell them that I had no idea what I wanted to do. Everything, and nothing, sounded appealing.
I wanted to rest.
I wanted to build a life that allowed for rest and for joy.
I wanted to figure out what brought me joy. In my years of relentless pursuit of a singular goal, I hadn’t thought much at all about what made me happy. I had thought about how to be the best, but not about how to live well.
The open-endedness of my new quest was a privilege, and a nightmare. I felt paralyzed by the choices laid out in front of me. I also felt parlayzed by how little I could do with a Bachelor’s Degree and a post-graduate certificate in a 2021 job market.
Many career options would require more school, and that was, frankly, the last thing I wanted to do.
Luckily, we went to Belize shortly after I moved home, so my newfound freedom and joy at being home bled into my love of travel. And then I went to Savannah with Isaac, driven by a desire to revisit the beautiful city, spend time with my brother, and ultimately, not be alone.
As I said, the entire week felt suffocating.
People say a funny thing about your 20s. They say that the 20s are the worst part of your life, and that it all goes uphill afterwards.
I think that’s another way of saying, “everything will be changing, all of the time, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Oh, and you’ll constantly be at a different stage in life than everyone around you, and it may feel lonely.”
So it was that I was at a different stage in life than my brother, who was about to embark on a college adventure of his very own.
I spent the week feeling as though I had made a grave mistake for coming at all. I was beyond the stage of life my brother and his friends were in; I didn’t want to stay up til all hours of the morning, not anymore.
I was essentially alone in Savannah, sharing a studio apartment with two 18-year-old boys, one who was a brother to me and one who was like a brother to me, and occasionally, we would have 6 more 18-year-olds crammed in this studio apartment drinking alcohol I had bought. A lot of alcohol.
So I found someone to keep me from constantly being alone. I spent most of my nights at Hunter Air Force Base with a guy I had met on Tinder.
As a testament to his character, he watched a bird shit on me and didn’t run away. He helped me clean it up. I may have ghosted him after that week, but I’ll never forget that.
We went out to dinner most nights; he drove me home after physical training in the mornings.
As I picked my way through the grimy bathrooms he and his roommate somehow tolerated(did they care?) or chatted with my mom on the phone at the one picnic table visible on the part of the base I wandered around while he did his morning work as an aviation engineer, I knew I didn’t belong here either. I felt just as alone in the nights as I did with the people I had come to Savannah with.
It never hit me to listen to how much I felt like myself when I wandered the city alone during the day, working on freelance pieces for extra money in cafes here and there.
Isaac invited me to come out to the beach with them on Tybee Island one day, and I said yes. I had wanted to come to the city; I loved it, and I loved the beach it was nestled close to.
As I swam out into the Atlantic Ocean, eventually lifting my legs up to float, it was just me and the sea and the sun.
For the first time all week, I felt weightless, perfectly at home.
I didn’t need to know what was next; I didn’t need to exert energy being anyone but perfectly, wholly, me. For the first time all week, I was content to just be, letting the sea rock me as waves crashed behind me.
I’ll add as a little post-script/epilogue that 4 years later, I have a much easier time finding both joy and belonging. I also enjoy my own company immensely and find it easier to spend time alone. So, do with that what you will.