Letter from a 4-day Boston veteran

Every once in awhile, my sporadic journal or epic email writing comes in handy.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Besties:

I’m so glad to be here. The drive went relatively fast; it never felt like endless driving. In fact, I can’t believe my mom and I talked the whole way out. We listened to music exactly once, and it was our first night when we hit black ice on a bridge and I spun us out into the snowy median. Can I talk for a minute about that? The event in its entirety is absolutely more frightening in hindsight. We were in the right lane and spun counter-clockwise across two lanes and slid backward in the snowy median for probably 50 yards. We were about 10 feet from crossing into the other lane. We were incredibly lucky to have spun into the center, the right side of freeway had a pretty steep dropoff and our car would have been stuck-stuck. Spinning was the most surreal experience because it was deathly silent and I honestly just kept waiting for us to hit something; a guard rail, another car, a sign post, anything. It’s really a miracle we didn’t. And a miracle we landed in a relatively shallow snow-bank. And a miracle someone in a giant truck stopped to tow/haul us out. And a miracle the road patch we slipped out on was completely iced over because we would have rolled had it not been solid ice. We learned to stop driving when it got dark (5:30 pm) and stay with our gut feelings of when to stop. The next day we passed 42 cars/trucks that were off/abandoned/overturned in the median or off the side of the road. That’s an experience I never want to relive again.

The roads were otherwise mostly okay. One more rough patch in Ohio with snow (on a stupid giant bridge over a ravine) had me praying literally in my head over and over and over “Please let us be safe, please let us be safe, please let us be safe.” For probably 10 minutes I said that in my head. It was intense. You guys, I have NEVER laid in my bed at night and literally thought, “I could die tomorrow” and felt that it could actually happen. It was truly, absolutely a humbling experience and I truly believe we were protected and blessed. I have never prayed for safety before and actually felt like I needed it. I knew along the way we were protected, but this is truly the first time I’ve sat down and truly “felt” the magnitude of what happened. In fact, I’m sitting here crying about it. Kind of a lot. If I didn’t already feel like I was supposed to be here, I have to now; because there were certain times on that trip that we probably shouldn’t have been so lucky. Thanks for your support and concern along the way.

Ahhhh. Shake it off Nat. On to more updates, less crying.

Having my parents here was fun and exceptionally helpful. I now have a customized closet and furniture pieces, curtains, and feel like I’m living in a “real” room. No moving for me for a long time. Hurry up and get out here to check it out. I’ve attached a picture so you can get the sneak peek.

RIP Nat's love of pink and orange 2007-2008

I’m still unemployed, but the prospects still look okay. I’m waiting to hear back on two from the last time I was out here and have three interviews with new companies this week. I’ve spent all morning submitting and applying elsewhere… as long as I’m working by early February, I’ll be okay. It’s actually really nice not having to jump right into work; I’m not ready to have only the weekends to get settled. My room is pretty clean, but that’s because there’s only about 10 percent of my crap inside of it. I need to go get some hangers so I can work on hanging up my “waaaaaaaay” too many clothes.

Two of my three roommates got engaged this weekend. (And the girl whose place I just took got married too.) Church was kind of hoopla yesterday; when people found out I was living in that house called it a “dangerous house” to be in. I calmly smiled and told them Kylee was next. I guarantee no one I live with ever gets married… so it’s a good thing they got out while they could have.

It’s very strange to transition from a non-touchy group to a touchy one. I hugged at least seven strangers yesterday. Who knew. I also introduced Tetris to the group of people at my house last night and they’re hooked as well. They don’t “get” the boxes yet, so it’s useless to play with them. Maybe soon someone will be a formidable opponent.

I recognize this is a freakin’ novel. And I’m sorry if it wasn’t funny or a good read. I couldn’t post this information because it’s very close to my heart; but I wanted each of you to know how I feel. I absolutely feel lead and guided to be here. I’m trying my hardest to operate on faith and keep myself close to the Spirit. I’m trying to be better about kneeling out-of-bed prayers and being a more dedicated disciple. That’s what we’re here for; and if that’s all I came to Boston to learn how to do, I’m okay with that. In my prayers the other night, I told Heavenly Father I’d come this far on faith–I was ready for whatever next he had in store. I started putting up photos last night and teared up a few times–it’s hard being here alone; I get sucked in to looking at photos on my screen saver ALL the time. I’m sorry I never told each of you how much I love and respect each of you and love just being near you. I’m sorry I wasn’t a toucher — I’d hug you each a thousand times now if I could.

XOXO,

Nat

Three days after the above letter was written, this photo was taken. And my official life in Boston had begun.

The best and the worst of times

Everything should have been perfect. Sometimes I believed it was, but in reality, there was more internal struggle than there should have been, and the people around me knew it.

After graduating from BYU in April of 2005, I spent four months at home in Portland looking forward to moving in with my girlfriends in Salt Lake City. I had no job lined up and no idea what I wanted to do. I graduated with a degree in Public Relations, but my heart was never in it. In fact, I knew I wanted nothing to do with it and never spent a single moment hunting for something in my “field”.

A few of the girls found us a duplex to move into in Sugarhouse–a trendy part of town on the south-eastern part of the city. We were five cute, fun girls living together and doing everything together. We got along as well as five twenty-two-and-three-year olds can–probably better than most. The typical bedtime hour fell between 1 and 2am every night as we couldn’t put the fun down long enough to be responsible, post-grad professionals. (But maybe this was the best part — delighting in the transition between college and “the real world”?)

I landed a job as an Account Assistant at a niche Internet marketing agency. It was a random job posting found in a random place, but I can trace every single good career fortune back to that first job out of college. The everyday ins and outs of that job were “meh” — but the people were great and the doors opened up to me as a result of my time spent there proved to be indispensable.

So I was traveling on the weekends with my roommates. Bowling after work with my coworkers.  Spending Sundays at my Grandparents’ place downtown or lounging about with my sister and brand new niece. Life should have been perfect.

But sometimes the distance between “should” and “are” isn’t easy to classify. My time in Salt Lake can best be classified as bittersweet. I did plenty of social things with my roommates but spent quite a bit of angsty time behind closed doors. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was moody and unpredictable and I’ll be honest, probably hard to live with. Whether or not it’s true, I felt misunderstood and lonely. My public blog announced fun trips I took or funny anecdotes from my daily living, but my private journal documented my battle with the proverbial  battle to “figure it all out”.  I struggled with self doubt. I struggled with feeling like I didn’t belong. I struggled with identity. Outside our duplex’s four walls, Salt Lake wasn’t my home–it didn’t bring me joy. And then, already feeling uneasy, I let a few experiences with friends of friends rattle me–and question my place in that scene and that lifestyle.

I just wasn’t happy. Should have been, had every reason to be, and just wasn’t.

Things came to a head about one year into my SLC life. Two of the roommates had moved to NYC to attend graduate school and we took a field trip to visit.  It had always been a pipe dream of mine to live in New York–but for one reason or another never actually thought it could be a reality.  I didn’t know anyone who’d made that kind of drastic change; it seemed beyond reason and smart logic. On that trip, I said something as such to my mom on the phone. Her general response was “Why not?”. Well why not indeed?

I saw the ins and outs of life in the City and immediately knew NYC was a great (wonderful, delightful, still my ultimate favorite) place to visit, but not necessarily to live. Boston settled in my crosshairs.

Once the thought entered my mind, the number of things that fell into place are too ridiculous to be coincidence. Within ten days I had a place to stay, had given notice at my job, and had the hard task of telling my best girlfriends I was uprooting my life and starting over somewhere so ridiculously far from home. I remember the shocked look on Krista’s face when I told her that cold morning we ate breakfast at the Blue Plate Diner. But she couldn’t have been too surprised; I think it was pretty obvious I was unhappy.

I was moving 2,000 miles east in the dead of winter without a job lined up. But I knew, could just feel, that I was doing the right thing. I never had a doubt–not a one. Living in Salt Lake provided me the conveniences of everyday living; proximity to family, friends, and city whose streets are wide and straight.

But my life needed shaking and it was thrown on its head in a matter of days.

The start of something new

I blog the current events of my life over at Nat Attack is the New Blog. Started nearly four years ago, that blog chronicles my life just before my cross-country move from Salt Lake City (the mothership) to the fast-paced, bitterly-cold-in-the-winter, heaven-on-earth-in-the-spring-summer-and-fall, booming (mission field) metropolis that is Boston. Oh, and a few other things here and there.

This blog space will be used to house my memories in more of a short story format. (Read the reasoning behind What I’m Writing About.) Recently, I was reading a memoir and thought, “Hey! I could (maybe) (probably) do that.” So for my twenty-seventh birthday, I’m giving myself a writing assignment.  <Enter stress here.>

But really, I think we’re going to have some fun, right?

RIGHT?