Mountains and basins
First off, I want to say hi and welcome, if you just so happened to stumble across this blog. Go check out my ‘About’ page to understand what this blog is about, but in short, it’s really just my ‘specified place for random.’ Enjoy :)
So for this post, I wanted to talk about life’s ups and downs because I had some major ones in 2022.
Going back seven months ago, my life was completely different from what it is today. I was living up in Orlando, 2.5 hours away from my family, my best friend, and my boyfriend. I was studying Accounting (for some reason, LOL) at UCF, living with someone who I THOUGHT was my friend but was actually super toxic, and overall just hated my life! Every day I would cry on the phone to my mom, my boyfriend, and my best friend because I was so unhappy with my living situation.
The week of September 26th changed everything. News reports stated that a big hurricane was rolling in from the Gulf of Mexico, and its name was Hurricane Ian. He was set to hit Tampa and finish up in the Panhandle near Tallahassee. Well, Ian decided he didn’t want to go USF and FSU, and instead, he chose to hit Ft. Meyers directly and trail off into Orlando. On September 28th, Ian hit Orlando and brought tons of rain with him. By 9:00 am, my street was full of water and flowing like a river. We sat on the balcony of our second-level apartment and watched as the water quickly submerged the parked cars down below. Within the first 6 hours of Ian being in Orlando, my whole community was flooded halfway up the first floor of the apartment complexes. The water was so deep that the coast guard had to come in and save us, yet they got stuck and couldn’t proceed! We Finally decided that we had no other choice but to walk through it, so we packed what we wanted to save in a small bag, placed it on our heads, and walked in shoulder-deep water till we reached the entrance of the community… that was definitely one for the books! In the span of a week, I lost my apartment, my close friend, and my entire college life up in Orlando. I was completely lost.
After this traumatic event, I came back down to South Florida with nowhere else to go. After a couple of days back, I finally felt happy and safe again. For the first time in months, I was surrounded by love and ‘family.’ I quickly realized my whole life was not up in Orlando, but it was down here. I had left it behind. After that, one day, I said, ‘f*ck it,’ and decided I didn’t want to go back. I terminated my lease, enrolled in FAU, and told my parents that id rather commute 2.5 hours every Monday and live down here than live up there and hate every waking moment of it. And that is exactly what I did.
This decision changed my whole life around. I started doing the things that I loved again, like yoga and walking. I picked back up Nannying, which did so well, I created my own business. I changed my major to Management and have gotten the best grades of my entire college experience. I can now see my boyfriend, best friend, and family almost every single day since I’m home. Im low-key saving my parent a crap ton of money now that they don’t have to pay for room and board. And lastly, I got healthier and happier both physically and mentally.
All of this is to say that the past ten months have really taught me that life is not a linear path. Dont get me wrong, I knew that life wasn’t straight. However, it’s sometimes hard to remember that there are so many unavoidable hills, basins, prairies, and rivers that lay in your path, and a lot of times, you need a major event to show you that everything going down must come up and vis versus. There is no stopping these obstacles, so all you can do is figure out the best way to work through the lows so that you can arrive at the highs as gracefully as possible. Lows are meant to learn from and grow from and never last too long. Just take it from me, without my flooded apartment, I wouldn’t be back in my hometown, where I am quite literally thriving mentally, physically, spiritually, and financially.
