out of here.

Tonight I found myself struck with the inexplicable, deep, intense need to move away from Minnesota.

I don't understand it. I love the Twin Cities; my heart literally swells with happiness when I'm driving/riding from St. Paul into Minneapolis and I see the skyline at twilight, and it's perfect. And it's clean and beautiful and I love this place that has been my home these last three years.

But tonight, although it's really something that's been shifting around my brain and heart for awhile now, tonight it all came together and solidified and my heart was screaming, "get out of here!" I feel like I'm smothering here; my life is mostly inert. There are a few people I of course love to death here, but this enormous part of me just feels like I can't be here next year or I'll go crazy. There's too much world that I need to see and experience and own. Studying abroad, I sometimes think, is the worst thing that could ever happen to me, because it has made me feel like this world is not so big and scary as I once thought it was, and has made me think that I can experience it and live in it and that I'm not restricted to my little midwestern corner of the world.

It's nine months until graduation. And I am more determined now than ever to work my butt off to get into the NYU Publishing Institute, and if I get in, I swear I'm not looking back. I want out. I want more. And I don't know how that will affect my relationships with tons of other people, but I know that those nearest and dearest to me will always be there, and most of those bonds have already been tested through studying abroad and moving and they have lasted. Maybe it's just the stress of graduation and my fear of being stuck that makes me so intensely desperate to get out of here, and maybe it's a fleeting thing that will pass, but I really don't think so. I want more than this too much to lose that.

The only scary part about all of this is that I'm so afraid of being lonely. I'm not so fantastic at making friends, and new places are a little frightening, and I'm slightly afraid of losing some people who are so very very dear to me, although as I've already said, most of those bonds have already been tested so I'm not too terribly worried. It's just the starting over that scares me, because I've taken so long to make these friends and I'm not sure I can handle two years in a new place to reach the same level.

But this is the time in my life to do these things, to move while I'm still relatively unattached and while I have the energy and freedom and space and time to do these things, and I feel very suddenly determined to do them.

Look out, world. I'm coming, and I'm a disaster. But I'm coming.