Going Back "Home"

I'm taking my first visit back to Arizona today. It feels differently than I thought it would. I don't think I really allowed myself to be homesick. Was Phoenix even my home? LA isn't my home either. Phoenix isn't my native land, but it is familiar and holds a certain comfort despite any grumpiness I still hold for it. There is comfort in knowing where all the best Starbucks are and knowing which Target is the good Target.

I didn't think I would be excited to go back. I think I'm inherently a bridge burner, and when I leave places I don't necessarily intend on going back, even if I know at some point I will. 

Going back to LA the first few times felt like I was running back home to something comfortable and I had friends I was dying to see, and parents to avoid. I ran home to LA frequently, at first. Then Tempe and ASU became my home and I didn't need the security of going back so often. My trips became more like holiday visits rather than an escape from loneliness. 

I'm in a different place this time. Yes, I did run from Phoenix to Seattle in a similar way I moved from LA to Phx. I wasn't running for survival though, or toward a big plan, like college. Seattle still feels like the place that I'm supposed to be, but Phoenix is the home of my hero and my favorite person. I knew that I was choosing to move away from her. I knew that I was hoping to find my own freedom and give her some space. I was feeling like I never found my place in Phoenix and in her home, so it would just be easier if I grew up and made my own home and found my own place. I haven't yet. It's only been 4 months and I need to give it time. That leaves me going back to Phoenix probably a little too eager. I'm fearful that I will come back to Seattle and all the sparkle will be gone and all I will see is that I'm alone; I'm not making the progress that I thought I magically would in a new city.  It took two years to settle into AZ, to be fair. I just don't want to allow myself to pass time without meaning, and I feel like that's what I've been doing. 

I'm so happy to see a few people that I miss dearly, but I'm not telling the whole city that I'm coming. It's too overwhelming to try to see everyone. I'm there for work, anyway. I won't be there on my own schedule. 

I hope for emotional maturity and a sense of clarity. I hope to enjoy my time there and to look forward to coming home to Seattle with a new sense of vigor for my current life, and not dwell on missing what I left behind. 

xoxo Sheri

Let Me Post Some Positivity

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I feel like perhaps I'm on the ending leg of my Moody Tour. I'm not sad, per se. I'm just forever confused. At some point along the line of life, I have made it my mission in life to understand how the world works. That, itself, is probably my downfall. I may never put all the pieces into place and it's so damn frustrating! I hate being confused and not understanding something!

Anyway, I don't have the answers to understand others - UGH - but I can work on understanding myself better. I'm kind of in this hermit stage. Maybe my life is a hermit stage. But, I feel like I'm on the verge of knowing myself, like kind of, almost, maybe in a place to say - I'm me, and I'm full of some really weird shit and maybe I don't have to apologize for that. The best people I have ever known are unapologetically themselves.

I've always loved my godmother because I always saw her as a person who just stuck to her values, that was her thing. I had this dude who I was ridiculously and obsessively in love with before I moved to Arizona. Yes, of course he was dashingly handsome in an old Hollywood dreamy sort of way. But, also he was weird as fuck in a way that there is no one on the planet who is like him and everyone adored that about him. Yep, even and especially me.

So what's my thing? I think I spent my teenage years, like all teenagers, by trying to create my thing. Sorry former Sheri, it doesn't work that way. I am who I am. I can change my outlook, I can change my hair, I can take up yoga, but I'm still me.

I'm a girl who is also a lady. I'm forever emotionally a teenager. I love everything pink and everything that should only be attractive to 4 year old princesses. I FUCKING LOVE GLITTER.

I believe in standing up for all women's rights. Xena Warrior Princess is my hero. I'm boy crazy but also love women. I'm obsessed with organizing things and also have phases of being the biggest slob on the planet. I love sleep and would sleep all day every day if I could. I'm a foodie. I'm chubby yet adorable and will most likely drive over walking. I like to dress up and I also love to crawl out of bed and take on the world in my pjs. I'm a target-aholic. I inexplicably LOVE children. I meet them, and I fall in love, all of them, no matter what. I love good parents and abhor shitty ones. I'm glad adoption is a hard process, or else I would have ALL THE KIDS. I love love love a good friend until the end of time, and I will cut you out of my life in a second if you disrespect me. I'm lonely at times, but warmed by my convictions of always standing up for myself and making decisions in my best interest (until I have a family and have to think of others in my life decisions). I'm narcissistic and live in my own world where I am in fact the center of my own universe. I cry for others when their dreams come true. I cry a lot actually. I think I know everything and I want to share my wisdom. I'm artistically talented. I'm gifted in most subjects. I'm just a smart cookie. But, I can't sing and I really wish I could. I don't like people who aren't open to change. I hate rudeness...like hate hate hate it. 

I need to stop trying to control who I am and just be who I am. Not every person is made for every other person. It's ok to not be friends with everyone. It's not ok to be rude to people you don't like, but it's ok to go your separate ways, respectfully. The sooner I accept myself and my flaws, the happier I'll be and the less I'll care when someone rudely points them out to me, trying to hurt me. 

This is coming off pretty "Haters gonna hate" and while it's not my exact intention, it may be applicable. I don't think I even know enough people to be that sassy. I mean it more like - Hey let's all just learn to love ourselves and then it will be so much easier to love each other. Happiness can spread just as easily as misery, if we let it.