It took me a while to gather the courage to write this one.

I’ve been in San Diego for just over five weeks now, and life is radically different than I thought it would be. I guess I had certain kinds of expectations.

If anything, I expected to be a lot happier and excited to be here. I love new places, always have, and I’ve uprooted myself once before to live in an entirely different place; moving to Sweden was a huge thing, but that was under very different circumstances, and I kind of knew what I was getting myself into there.

The thing is, I had no idea what I was getting myself into here. It’s a lot of change to move a third of the way across the country, have only a handful of friends, and not have any sort of reliable job. It was a lot of adjustment for me — for anyone, really — and I wasn’t well-equipped to handle any kind of emotional stress.

It would only be my luck that emotional stress had a way to find me.

I considered my move three-fold: mind, body, and heart. I explained in a previous post that I knew I needed something new, and that I had arranged accommodations in San Diego — that takes care of my mind and body. But as for my heart? I had fallen for someone out here, and I didn’t even know it. I knew that the guy I had met was wonderful, I enjoyed my time with him, and that I wanted to be around him more — and the fact that my housing and intended career path matched up with San Diego, I thought that the pieces were just falling into place.

Guess what? It didn’t work out too well with the guy; in only four days, he broke it off. Among other things, I think we had a difference in expectations. Weeks later, after flurries of text messages, letters, arguments, and a lot of misunderstandings and rash decisions, we don’t even speak. I know now that I fell for him and that my feelings were stronger than I thought.

How did I not predict this was going to happen? Isn’t it a classic story? Conventional storytelling would have marked it as doomed from the beginning.

I’ve had about five weeks now to process just what happened. It’s been a valuable lesson. This kind of stress would hurt even if I was in a comfortable place  –  even if I had friends, family, a stable job, and more money than I know what I do with, it would still hurt. It just happened to be a bit harder on me because it took me mostly by surprise, occurred while I didn’t have very good footing, and most of all, when my expectations were very different.

However, I’m not giving up on San Diego. I love it here. When I drive over the valley, even if the smog is a bit thick, I look over all the buildings and hills and I am thankful that I’m here. I still have my mind and body to think about while my heart repairs itself; I have temporary seasonal work until I find something more career-oriented, and I have all sorts of new neighborhoods and places to explore — these are the things I desperately needed.

Sadly, I won’t be home for the holidays. I have always expected to be with my family over the holidays, but just like I expected a lot of other things, that doesn’t mean it’ll always happen. And I guess I’ll get used to it.

Were my expectations fulfilled? Not entirely. Not at all, for the most part. But I have a new set of expectations now. Is it a vicious cycle? We’ll see. All I can be certain about now is that expectations are just that — expectations. If they were certain, they’d be called “guarantees.”