When You Feel Like You're Going Backwards

It was 2017, and the lease with my three friends was about to be up.

One was moving for a job, one was getting married, and the other was looking forward to independence in her own place. I was happy for each of them. They had exciting things coming in their lives, each on different paths, but moving ever forward.

But I felt like I was going backwards.

I had gone back to school to get an Associate’s in Graphic Design, which was a completely different direction from my Bachelor’s degree. I still had a year left and couldn’t afford to live on my own, so I had to do what I absolutely never wanted to do and said that I would never do: move back home. 

I had enjoyed being independent, but what I enjoyed more than anything was living with my friends.

Week day nights sprawled out on our second-hand couches, eating whatever we could scrounge up watching Friends. Staying up late talking about deep stuff and silly stuff that left us slap happy. Anytime they wanted to do something, I would drop my homework or studying, because I knew in a few years that I wouldn’t regret getting a lower grade, but I would regret not having more memories with them.

I was mourning the end of these days months before we even had to think about packing the first box. That date in April stared back at me on the calendar, and I was painfully aware of the speed at which it was coming.

But everyone else, it seemed, was fine. It was just another spring to them. Each had their own agenda of what had to be done in the last few months; every day was basically just another day for them. But I was savoring every ordinary moment, holding it close. I kept my feelings to myself, doing a lot of crying behind closed doors. I didn’t want to rain on anyone’s upcoming parades, but I also knew they didn’t identify with me.

I was alone in my feelings and was anticipating the loneliness I would feel once we split ways. 

Move out day came and went, and over the next few months what I had feared would happen did happen. I seldom saw my friends over the next few months—dinner with one here, lunch with one there.

Friendship and connection are so important, but where they were in their lives, they didn’t seem to need it like I did. It was seven months until I successfully initiated all of us getting together again, two of my friends happily busy and distracted by the fun things going on in their lives and the other just really busy. We got together and watched the AMA’s and filled each other in on what was going on in our lives between watching bits of the show.

I told them about a guy in one of my classes who I had started to hang out with. It would be an “it’s complicated” type of relationship if we were to move on to being more than friends. He was a semester ahead of me and would be moving away in a couple of months. I would still have another semester left and be moving to Nashville after I graduated, and though we had a great connection and great chemistry, we lived different lives that I knew, in the end, would drive us apart. They listened excitedly and encouraged me to just go on a date, kiss, and have fun.

It was so nice being all together, but I knew that once we left that night, it would be several weeks before we would do it again. Although I was so grateful to hang out with them, I grieved the ease of being able to hang out before, when we were roommates, and my unmatched enthusiasm of being together. 

Over the following weeks and months, I quickly became more than friends with the guy I had told them about. I was wrapping up school for the semester and applying for internships for next semester.

I’d come to really like this guy. When we were just friends, he had become one of my favorite people I’d ever known; those feelings only intensified when we became more than that.

But after the semester ended and a couple of weeks before he was about to move, the relationship we had started to dwindle, ending abruptly and painfully, without the chance for me to even say goodbye. This knocked the wind out of me.

With a broken heart, I started my last semester. I miraculously got my dream internship only to realize that Graphic Design—what I had gone back to school for and spent two years on—was not for me in the real world.

For several weeks during this time I housesat for a kind couple that owned a large house in a nice neighborhood, the kind of house that had two different staircases leading to the second floor.

I had previously stayed there before when two of my three roommates each had house-sat there before when we had lived together. That house was filled with memories of laughing while making curry and Scotch cake in that kitchen and hanging out in that living room with the huge two-story windows. But without friends and laughter filling the space, that place seemed even bigger, leaving me feeling lonelier than ever.

I was both physically alone and lonely, feeling like a failure before I had even started my career, missing the guy with whom I’d never had such a connection with, the memories of us everywhere I turned, and it felt like my friends were MIA through it all. 

It rained a lot over the weeks that I was there, and I would just stare out the windows, desperately dreaming for better days in Nashville, tears streaming down my face like the raindrops that ran down the glass of the huge two-story windows.

I didn’t have a soul to turn to that understood or had the time or seemingly the desire to try to understand what I was going through. It was a time I needed my friends most and their absence really hurt, no matter how unintentional. A year had passed since the day my friends and I moved out of our apartment and over the course of that time it felt like my social life, love life, and work life had completely fallen apart around me, slowly and then all at once. I finished school with no clearer direction as to what I was going to do with my life. I moved to Nashville, needing change like I needed air. 

I moved and change came.

I explored the city, absorbing the food, the people, and the openness a new city brings. Living here has been quite the ride—I’ve met some amazing people, made good friends, held very different jobs, have had some tough times, and have had a lot of great times, all growing me and stretching me.

Thank God seasons change and chapters end and new chapters begin. But I learned so much through that year before moving.

One thing I found is sometimes it’s more healing to know that although you’re feeling alone, you’re not alone in those feelings. And that someone understands you. Even though you don’t know me, if you’re reading this and going through a hard time and feeling lonely, I empathize with you. And change will come.

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