November Personal

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November brought about some great times and some serious strides forward in establishing a home in London. I spent some quality time with my friends Sandy and Marc, found a unique California connection with my new friend Rose, and expanded the people I knew in London through them and their friends. It really felt like we were building something and that felt great. Around Thanksgiving, my college roommate, Mike, came to visit from New York and two of my best friends from SF came out as well. All of a sudden, I felt like I had a real life with real friends. It was amazing. We had some great nights on the town, and just the security of knowing those guys were around made me feel at home. It reminded me that home is really about a family, not a location, and having those guys in London (my friends visiting and the ones who lived there) made me feel at home.

November wasn't all fun and games, unfortunately. I learned early in the month that my boxes from the US would not arrive until mid December, 4 months after I shipped them! In taking the good from the bad, I guess you could say that I learned to live with very little (3 suitcases of clothes). In fact, when my boxes did arrive, I started to wonder what was in 19 boxes that I really needed and why did i send all that crap over? I also learned that my great uncle, who lived in London, had passed away. He was really an inspirational man, and over the course of the events surrounding his funeral, I was lucky enough to get to know his children (my mom's cousins) who all live in or around the UK and Europe. I must say that getting to know them and knowing how near they are also made me feel very much at home as well.

After my great uncle's funeral and after the visits from my US friends, I had a bit of an emotional crash and went into a funk for about a month. I was struggling with my emotional need for acceptance and the conflict of that need with my personal desire to express myself exactly the way I wanted (and the fear of how it would be received). Having travelled alone for 3 months, I definitely missed the security of close friends and a group or tribe to which I belonged. Of the people that I'd met and spent time with, I had a lot of common things to share, but I also wanted to explore outside of those commonalities. That freedom to try new things was part of the reason I left San Francisco. Unfortunately, my need for acceptance and love prevented me from going out there on my own. At times I blamed my friends for not being more open minded, but in truth, it was my fear of being alone that prevented me from getting out there, not their un-interest in exploring different things. The lesson from this is one I've learned (and forgotten) many times. And that is to just be yourself and the people you click with will be drawn to you. You don't need to mold yourself to someone else's way of life...in fact, you are cheating yourself if you do. I expect this will be a never-ending battle/lesson as I roller coaster through periods of high self-confidence and low self-esteem. A lesson I did learn out of this is that you can't pick the people you want to hang out with until you know many different people (who live near you). So if you are looking for a particular experience, and you don't know others who enjoy that, then a) you can't/shouldn't try to make the people you know enjoy that experience and b) the best way to find people who do enjoy that is to just go do it and see who shows up!

In the end, the holiday season turned things around and the year finished on a high note, but times were not always great.