It’s about to get real today up on the blog. I don’t normally open up about personal matters, but it’s a conversation I would like to have.

I think that moving every couple of years does go against human nature. In March, after two years living in Italy, I moved back to California to go to grad school. It has been my hardest transition yet, and the most depressing. This partially has to do with the fact that I have never loved school and I was being thrown right back into it. In fact, when it comes to school, most of the time I just feel out of place and inadequate. But I did intend to tackle this first-semester head on. If the Navy was paying me to go to grad school then I would do the best I possibly could.

Just after arriving in California, there wasn’t much time to check-in to school, get set up for the first week of classes, and find a place to live. For some reason, Monterey California is not the easiest when looking for places to live. Most of the places in this area are very small and old and for the better part of my first week in California, I would sit on Craiglist for a whole day waiting for postings. I’d call immediately, and be told that the place was already taken, within an hour!

So frustrating.

Eventually, in the first 10 days, I was able to find an apartment and a few days after that I moved in. There’s just one problem, it was completely empty.

When I was leaving Italy the move and everything that came with it was very hectic. I wasn’t able to actually move out of my house until 7 days before I was flying back to the states. Which meant that I would have to wait for up to 60 days for my things to arrive in California.

It’s just part of #thatNavylife I suppose, but sleeping on the floor in an empty house for 2 months while completing the first semester of grad school was not all its cracked up to be, let me tell you. It’s actually really hard. Feeling so alone and trying to integrate into this new life. I went from being a socialite to a lone wolf in one week. In fact, I still pretty much do everything alone and I’ve lived here for almost 5 months.

The floor was actually pretty comfortable and I had brought a camping backpack with me so I put up my tent and that was that. But studying while sitting on the floor gets pretty old pretty quick.

In addition, my car was also on its way from Italy. I bought a bike to get around the second day after I arrived in California, and I had to bike every day to class no matter the weather.

Luckily Monterey is a pretty small place, but that definitely determined where I chose to live because if I couldn’t get there by bike or on foot, then I didn’t even schedule a viewing. It ended up working out pretty well in the end, but my stuff did not arrive until the week before finals. gah. Talk about bad timing.

Not to mention the leaving Italy part. The moment you leave, that world just ceases to exist. Not until you get back to America and re-integrate do you start to feel like yourself again. This definitely takes some time.

In the process, bridges get burned. And sometimes it’s liberating.

The moment I left, well that was it. Nobody reached out to ask how things were going. It’s probably much easier if you are married and have a family because at that point you just don’t give a shit because there are many other things to worry about.

One guy actually sent me an email to explain to me all the reasons why he couldn’t be there as a friend, hahaha. That’s a first. There’s more to this story but no matter.

I’ve learned many lessons over the past few months.

Just understand that there are some truly awful human beings in this world and when you realize what horrific, toxic, influences they can be in your life, you have to leave all that shit on the floor and move the fuck on.

When you do it is liberating. Things will eventually come together, trust me. And remember, just because you are faced with a daily struggle doesn’t mean you are alone. The majority of us have our own daily struggles.

I received my household goods the week before finals, and no longer have to sleep on the floor. Yay for beds! I went down to LA and picked up my car once it arrived and no longer have to bike everywhere. I passed my first semester of grad school and flew to Peru for some solo travel and a little adventure, just to get that old spark back. Then I went to the grand canyon with 34 ladies I had never met previously and they were so inspirational. In fact, some of their stories were much worse than mine and I think we all grew in those four days in the canyon.

I still feel a lot of self-doubt in school on a daily basis and I put all kinds of pressure on myself as one of the few females in the Southeast Asia Strategy Major, but every day it gets easier and I have this amazing support system that I can reach out to anytime I need. Thank the lord for sisters, cousins, friends I’ve met through all walks of this life, and childhood friends. #squadgoals.

This article appeared first on The Cassey Excursion.