As I sit here at 5 a.m. on a Friday, with the anniversary of Hurricane Helene just a day away, I feel compelled to reflect. Moments like these, anniversaries, monumental life events serve as clear markers of how much time has passed. They prompt me to stop and wonder: how did I get to where I am today? Not just in my career, but in every facet of life.
Right now, I’m sitting on the couch with my sweet kitty, who’s tormenting the neighborhood cat outside our door in this place I moved into a little under two years ago. My best friend from middle school and her wife are still snoozing nearby, visiting from Pennsylvania. In these quiet moments, I realize how fortunate I am to have what I do, everything I’ve worked so hard for.
I’ve fought to be self-sufficient, to carve out a life that’s uniquely mine, an existence built on the choices I’ve made. Or so I tell myself. Sometimes it feels like life just happened to me, that I was carried along on some unseen current. But I know better. I made choices. At any moment, I could technically change the trajectory of my life. Yet, as the years go by, that truth feels increasingly distant, harder to grasp.
From my days living in North Carolina to the work I do now, I often wonder: how did I end up here? How did life unfold in such a way that I find myself in this place, emotionally, professionally, geographically, without fully understanding the journey?
When you pursue a specific career path—say, Nursing or Accounting you generally have a clear picture of your future. You go to school, and you know what your next step will be. But with Psychology, I was navigating unfamiliar territory. For most of college, I wasn’t even declared. I bounced between fields, education, sociology, theology, and psychology searching for some sense of direction. Truthfully, I had no clue what I was doing or what I truly wanted to do. I was just there, waiting for it all to be over.
I was still living at home, working full-time, and juggling classes. Meanwhile, my friends were moving out, living in dorms, experiencing those formative college years I only glimpsed from afar. My college journey wasn’t exactly picture-perfect. It was a continuation of the high school life I’d been living, but with mounting debt that made me realize I needed to be doing more.
Eventually, I declared a Psychology major because, honestly, it was the course with the most credits in my schedule, something that could help me graduate mostly on time. But in that decision, I began to question whether I truly chose this field out of passion. Did I love Psychology? Did I get good grades because I enjoyed the material, or because it came easier to me? These are questions I still ponder. The answers aren’t entirely clear.
Looking back, I realize that my journey was less about having everything figured out from the start and more about discovering myself along the way. Life has a way of unfolding unexpectedly, often in ways we couldn’t anticipate. And perhaps that’s part of the beauty, to learn, grow, and find purpose in the process of wandering, questioning, and slowly shaping the life I now call my own.
