Dear September

Please be kind to me.

Tomorrow, I am heading back to school after two years away. I am terrified. I was excited and nervous for so long. I am now terrified. I'm worried I won't be able to keep up. There's so much going on, and I know I always work better, learn better under pressure but I am a nervous thing. A scared, frightened thing. I've never been good with being wound up too much. Always a little reckless, always a springboard.

I really want this to work out. I really need this to work out - more than I am willing to admit, even with writing this now. I need this to work out. I need the blanks in my life to fall into place. I think above everything else, this is the thing that leaves me most insecure, most anxious. I don't like having no sense of direction in my life. I've never been good with aimlessness. I've been aimless. If this year of schooling goes well, if I work hard, if I am lucky- by the end of it, I can have a job. A real job. A creative job full of new opportunities, new people, new environments. I don't want to feel so lost. This is not an exploratory lost; this is a black, shadowy lost. It is "I-cannot-see-the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel" lost.

This month will be juggling. It will be finding balance. It will be finding where my new calm is, where my safety in the midst of all this trouble will be. It will be the sweet spot between adventure and self-care.

I start a full-time program. It will be a little over twenty hours of lectures and labs, and however many hours spent working at home. I will likely start working at a new coffee shop where I will have to learn so many new things. I will still try to balance yoga into my days, weeks. It is something that both my body and mind need. I don't think it is something I can go long without anymore. There is something sacred about going to the classes, seeing the faces of my teachers, hearing their words. Their questions. I will try to schedule in a social life. I will try to date. I will try to make this go as well as I can.

I hope I make friends. I hope they're fun and we spend real time together. I hope we work well together. I hope that the program will not be so difficult that I cannot handle it. I hope I will enjoy my time. I hope that I will be happy, that I'll learn a lot. I hope I'll laugh a lot. Open my eyes a little more, have my world shifted into a new adventure that I'll be able to embrace. I hope I won't lose everything I've worked hard for up until this point. I hope I'll continue to work harder to let these new things fall into place too.

September, please be kind to me. Please let me be happy. Let me learn. Let me meet lots of people, make friends. Let things work out with this guy. I think I can really like him, or I do really like him. I think I need someone like this in my life. Stable, sweet, kind, patient. Please, please, please let things fall into place the way they need to be. Please let me learn balance, learn calm, learn a new sort of bravery to do all of this.

It all starts tomorrow. I hope I do well.

Talk to you later.