Connections and Community

I've been thinking a lot in the last few days about what I want to write. I was afraid when I started this blog that I would eventually spill out every ounce of wisdom in me and be left with nothing else to say. I don't think I'm quite tapped yet, but I haven't been able to formulate anything particularly noteworthy as of late. So I've just been thinking. This may end up a little free form and rambly, but it's starting to ache a little to continue to mull things over, so here goes.

I've been feeling a little isolated lately. More than just lonely. Disconnected. An anthropology professor I had once said of college freshman that their success or failure depends on their ability to become part of a community. Most freshman enter college without ties to a sense of community. In high school they most likely had their identity tied to something and some group of people - sports team, band, church group, yearbook staff... And save the odd exception, most of this gets left behind as they move on with their lives. They start out from scratch and eventually (ideally) a community will form, or they will assimilate into an existing community. From my understanding, this is the purpose of living in dormitories. To build community.

My freshman year was textbook, according to this professor, on the surface. I was in marching band in high school, this was my community, but I went to a college that only one other person from my graduating class was attending. I joined the marching band in college - a built-in community of 400. I was living in a dorm, in a suite with 5 other girls. More community. I spent most all my time in the music building which was full of like minded individuals with whom I should have shared a common ground. I liked to hang out in the basement lounge (when I should have been practicing) because I felt less alone when I was around people. I didn't like being shut up in a windowless room for hours on end - hence why I didn't remain a music major for very long. In my mind I was a part of this community and I "knew" a lot of the people in it. It didn't really matter that most of them probably didn't know me, except as that girl that was always in the lounge. As much as I tried to tell myself that I belonged, I didn't really...

It wasn't until my second semester that I really put myself out there and rushed a music fraternity. To my shock and suprise I was accepted and it was then that I really found my community and my place in college. Even when I changed majors and left school for several years, that community was still there. When I went back to school most of the girls I had known in my first two years had graduated and moved on with their lives, but the core of our sisterhood was still there and that common bond we all shared made it easier to step back in and still feel at home.

It seems like I've repeated this cycle several times in my life thus far. Leaving home to go to college, leaving college and moving home, and now leaving home again to move out on my own. Each time I have the "freshman year" feeling of disconnect as I face an unkown world and try to find my place in it. In the last four years since I graduated it was much harder to find a place as all I really had in my life were work and my family. I've never really been connected to my any of my work communities. It always seems like work stays at work, for the most part. It wasn't until I started CrossFit that I had that feeling of community again and felt like I had a place to belong again. Even more than I had in college; I was an active part of this community, but here I find myself a freshman all over again.

Right now I've got that first semster feeling, that I'm hanging around like-minded people, but not really belonging to the community. Part of this could be my reluctance to let go of the life I have just left behind. It is even harder now that I've been back home to visit. Being back in the community where I've spent 2/3 of my life makes this new place feel even more foreign. I felt so at ease in my old box, as if I'd been there all my life. There was a calmness in my workouts, a familiarity that felt like being wrapped in your favorite blanket. A feeling I just haven't found here, yet.

I've been thinking a lot about how I feel in my new life. Mostly I feel uncomfortable and alone. I work in a small office, in a cubicle, and for most of my day I don't talk to anyone. I go to CrossFit in a place where I still feel like a visitor  and I still don't know many people. Then I ride a train with a bunch of strangers and come back to my apartment buidling (full of more people I don't know) to my empty apartment where I have no one to talk to. I really only realized this weekend how much I don't talk any more and how much I do alone. I lived alone for a few years in college and I got used to doing things alone and I told myself I didn't mind. That there was something liberating about being able to go to dinner alone, or go to a movie all by yourself. I've realized though that going out to eat and to the movies is my equivalent of sitting in the music lounge. It feels better to be around people, even if they don't know me.

I'm trying to find contentment with my new life. I'm trying to play the cards I've been dealt. I'm hoping that eventually I'll feel like I'm a part of a community again, but I wonder if being content is the same as being happy. I've talked with others who have made changes like this before and their advice is that when you come to terms with the fact that this is your life and become happy with where you are, that things will start to get better. But still I wonder if "what is" is the same as "what's meant to be"? At what point do you settle for being content with the life you have and stop longing for the life you've envisioned for yourself, or the life you wish you had?

I've been thinking a lot lately. I don't have many answers yet.