And then life was beautiful..

You know, life has a really funny way of teaching us things about ourselves. I’m a firm believer that all things happen for a reason and, even though that makes me a slight over-thinker who dissects every not-so-coincidental coincidence I find myself in, I’ve found this mentality to assist me significantly in learning the art of letting go.

I’ve always loved control. Knowing that I have the safety and security of my focus made me less anxious about the unknown. I always had a plan and I executed it with flying colors. I felt so on top of my life and sure of where I was headed.

That was until I fell in love.

I’ve always described love using this metaphor: skydiving. Before I knew what love was, my idea of a perfect partner, and the model I had compared every potential partner to, was someone who would jump out of a plane with me. More often than not, I would come across people who seemed they would be more inclined to wait for me at the bottom and only hope my parachute worked. I basically wanted someone who was so down for me that they would endure the wildest parts of life with me without hesitation.

When I met my first love, I realized that metaphor still existed as a framework of love for me, only this time it had some slight tweaks. I had a reality check. Just like jumping out of a plane would be, I quickly realized how scary it is to fall in love. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable despite the risk of pain is that moment when your feet leave the ground beneath you before you fall into the clouds.

As you could probably guess, I eventually jumped out of the plane and spent the past year riding out the grooves of my first serious relationship. I felt probably every emotion humanly possible. Yes, I am a Cancer and I’m very sentimental in general, but experiencing this relationship seriously threw me in for a wild ride. I experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows that came with figuring myself out while coexisting with this person who was also simultaneously doing their own growing. To grow with and alongside someone you love can be just as beautiful as it is ugly.

Long story short, my lover and I ended up clashing in our growth trajectories, and I experienced my first heartbreak. I moved back to my mom’s house in Los Angeles and spent a lot of time alone - thinking, processing and feeling everything, as one does post-breakup. During that time I had a lot of epiphanies about myself, life, and love - 3 things that were always an enigma to me.

A month into the healing process, an opportunity arose for me to move to San Francisco for the last 2 weeks of my internship. I thought it was the perfect way for me to fully transition myself into this next chapter of my life and take the city by storm like a natural Bay Area Carrie Bradshaw. While I was thrilled to take this leap of faith, I was nervous to move back to the Bay where I knew I would live among the ghosts of the old memories I had created with my ex and have to leave my core support system of family and friends.

The night before the big move, I met up with my world-traveling best friend who’d rushed to catch up with me after coming back from her month-long adventure in Colombia. We swapped stories and laughs over drinks at the rooftop bar at Downtown LA’s The Hoxton Hotel, marveling at each other’s realized growth and toasting to a mutual evolution. It was then that she prompted me to start writing again so that I could share my experiences and lessons from my personal journey and have something to reflect on.

After that, we’d wandered the city that I spent my adolescence in and would be leaving the next day, blasting music and being carefree - a celebrated farewell as one chapter ended and another started.

So I now strive to chase that blissful optimism. The feeling that the sun will always rise again after the storm. Life started to feel a whole lot more beautiful in that moment, and I plan on romanticizing life to the fullest so I can continue to feel that. I have now officially “jumped off the plane” that is moving to a new city as a successful, sophisticated, single woman.

I’m back and I’m better, baby. Let’s do this.

Cheers,

Enigma