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.”

Tonight was especially bad. I had a big blowup with the waiter boy (I thought this was over a while ago?!!), and to top it all off, I’m so stressed about money that I nursed a nosebleed for a good hour before I could go swing dancing. I really didn’t need that kind of stress tonight, and like I tend to do during times like this, I started to think about what it would be like to get out of here.

It’s funny that once I think I’ve actually gotten used to things here in Boulder, spats with (ex)boyfriends and money issues and overall happiness issues start popping up, giving rise to yet another of the many plots I’ve created that involve moving away.

There are plenty of reasons I should leave Boulder. Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong. Other times I just think it would be easier to find a job elsewhere. And even more miserably, dating doesn’t come easy in this town. (Ironically, two ex-boyfriends — whom I unfortunately see all over the place in this little berg — actually live in Denver now, but they work up here enough to run into me all the time.)

Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep, I have this incredible fantasy that being the new girl somewhere would bring all these great new things to me, like a decent guy or a new place to hang out with new people, and maybe I’d be happier. I’ll wake up the next day and realize that it’s kind of a naïve hope.

I have great friends here. I have people I care about and people who care about me. But something is missing, and I’m not quite sure what it is; the closest I’ve gotten to knowing is thinking that maybe I will have a better chance at everything elsewhere, and that I don’t get my fair chance here. But that might be giving myself too much credit. Jeez, I don’t know. Maybe I do just need to get out of here.

It would be a good time to get out; I need to find a job, and I need to pay my student loans. It might be easier to move for a job than have to wait for one. But I’m not sure I’d be able to get out so soon. The lease at this house runs out in August, but honestly — my heart belongs in this town. In this neighborhood. I can’t seem to believe that maybe I’m lying to myself about it.

Or maybe I’m just getting anxious because I am graduating soon and there are a lot of decisions to make. Even though I know just the things that would make me happy — you see, I set my heart on things and it’s tough to let go when those things don’t happen — I don’t see those things as happening. I don’t see that one person back in my life, I don’t see my name on that one desk in that one office, and I don’t see being able to live in that one place in that one neighborhood. This process of graduating and moving into a new stage of life is going to take the kind of flexibility and tolerance for a lack of stability that I have never before faced, but it’s going to have to happen at some point.

I’m hoping that Boulder will still be the place for me a few weeks into May. But I know that, up until then, I’ll get that pang to get out of here. For now, I might just have to ignore it. And maybe it’ll fade away by then.