Random thoughts . . .

Every life experience is significant though sometimes we don't realize it.

We go through both good and bad in life, but without this altering variety we wouldn't live life the same.

Change in our life is caused by choice. If you get in a car accident you choose to be extra aware of your surroundings while driving. Because whether or not it was your fault you don't want it to happen again. If by freak accident you almost drown in water because you can't swim you choose to sign up for classes at the local pool because again you want to avoid what happened (your near death experience.)

So on the subject of this live-and-learn experience it's important to realize that if we never get hurt by someone in a close relationship we would never learn how to forgive, and if we never passionately hated something how would we know true love when we find it? Life throws curveballs and we choose to react. But the bigger lesson is not in choosing between right and wrong; we all learned that in preschool. No, the real truth we need to be reminded of is that this choice, whether good/bad  right/wrong will impact our future.

For this reason I've never quite understood why people hate their past. I realize I may not know what you've been through, and I'm not going to pretend I do. I AM BLESSED. I've had a pretty great life compared to others but what's happened is in your past! Remember it or forget it, but either way FORGIVE it! Whether we like it or not, our past has made us who we are! I love me. I'm not trying to be vain or shallow, but I'm proud of my life with all its successes and all of its failures. Without the past their would be no future! By forgiving your past your give yourself permission to move one and truly know the meaning of life. Because what is life if we aren't living in the present?

Location and Identification

This summer was big, nah who am I kidding? IT WAS HUGE! I moved from my beloved state of California to the south. :/ The place I had heard stories of my entire life. That place where they speak English, but it sounds funny. The place where people are nice, but only to your face. The place where everyone goes to church, but that doesn't mean they're good people. The place where everything is sweet or fried or meat. The place where the girls are southern belles, and the boys are hat and boot wearing boys raised by anti-independent-women dads.

Yes. I know this makes me seem terrible, but this is what I knew of the south growing up. It's the stereotypes I was taught never having been to the south myself.

I've lived off and on in South Carolina for two years while attending college, but it's a university town, and I wasn't quite prepared to be totally immersed in the Southern culture.

So when I went home in May and found out that moving was in the works I freaked out!

I made it through . . . barely.

My friends in SC now have nicknamed me Cali'bama. I originally hated it, but it's kind of catchy and it helps explain myself to new folks (what the Southerners call a group of peeps).

Learning to live in a new world with new fashion and new lingo and new restaurants, etc. has been quite the experience. Sure I've lived in SC for two years with many southern friends but I never took seriously to adopting the southern ways because after all I was a Cali kid. I wasn't planning on sticking around. But now, boy have the tables turned. Not only do I have to understand these strange ways, but I must find substitutes for all my West Coast faves (In N Out, Peet's Coffee and Tea, KOIT, Dutch Bros. Coffee, the slang, the NorCal lifestyle, etc.)

I've felt lost. I'm still trying to figure out where I belong. I don't feel I can call Alabama home, but is California home if I don't live there? When people ask for introductions I never know where to say I'm from. I see someone in a Cali hoodie and I comment on it, but as soon as they ask where I live I feel awkward. I haven't yet made friends in Alabama, but as hard as I try it's so difficult to keep in touch with my old friends from CA. I don't count my parent's new church as mine because I've only been there once and know no one, but I don't belong to a church here in SC yet either.

The thing is, where I am from doesn't define me. I know that, but some days it's so hard to admit to myself. Who I am: my personality defines me, and that shouldn't change depending on where I live.