Identity

Well, my heavens, has it been a long time since I have visited this space! To be honest, I wasn't sure that I should continue blogging - I felt so detached from here. I feel that I am best in this space when I am pontificating about big ideas. Life ideas.

My life has EXPLODED in all the best possible ways over the past 6 months. I have truly experienced an embarrassment of riches. A course in life and entry into grad school. A new love. Loads of wonderful friends. The unceasing love and support of my incredible family, who helped me move from DC to Boston for school. I am truly the sum of the wondrous people in my life.

Which brings me to the notion of identity. I feel that in the course of the past 6 months I have negotiated and renegotiated a newer sense of self. It has been dizzying to say the least. For so long, I was very much the same with natural developments here and there.

And then I finally found a true professional course. And I was admitted in graduate school (someone else believed that I could do this too - someone besides my awesome mother). And I finally met someone who fit into my life the way no man had before. Who showed me such kindness, love, trust, intelligence, and humor. Who allowed me to express the love that I had so longed to give someone. I was made better by these things. These gifts. But I was also made different.

And now I am back in Boston and at school. Learning in an academic environment for the first time in 5 years. And it's all at once strange, hard, and wonderful. And we are constantly discussing our identities - our racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. I am here in this new/old place, closer to my family but farther from my love, and trying to navigate the next stages of my life (because I am not a true woman if I am not in super planning mode) and wondering how it will all play out.

There's the old Emily - so close to her awesome family and friends but perpetually single and looking for the one man who could be a kindred spirit. How can I mesh her with the new Emily - not only empowered by friends and family but also now career validations and an incredibly kind and loving man? It seems to be the ultimate decision that many of us face in this fast-paced, populated, multi-option, geographically diverse world. Hah, I am tired just typing this out, let alone making a decision. And the good thing is that I don't need to make one now. But it is coming down the pike. And I am not quite sure how it will all play out. How can I be the person I want to be and be with everyone I want to be? How can I have it all? The ultimate question of the modern woman. Of the modern human.

Update:  A very kind and wise friend read this post and wrote me the loveliest email about life. It meant a great deal but one of her best lines was that "we are all a work in progress." And that's the beautiful part. Thanks, C!

Photo credit: Emily Bowen