the milwaukee blues

So, it's officially been one week that I moved out of my house, flew over 1800 miles to a new city and started a new life in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I LOVE this city!

There are churches with tall steeples and local breweries on almost every corner. The houses all have tiny porches, with ornate wood details and a blanket of white, sparkling snow covers everything. The French, German, and Dutch influences on the architecture really make the city picturesque and idyllic, as if Walt Disney himself had designed it all for an unnamed themed land in one of his parks. And the weather isn't so bad. I really thought, that being a child of the desert, my body would go into shock and I would end up looking like Jack Dawson in that frozen ocean scene from Titanic, with blue-tinted skin and tiny, frozen icicles in my hair. But so far I'm good.

Our little apartment, is exactly just that - little. My old bedroom was as big as our living room, our sun room and my new bedroom combined. Now? It's this tiny square-looking thing with a tiny radiator and a tall window that faces a brick wall. Yet, somehow? I absolutely love it! I dont know it's the old-fashioned claw foot bathtub, or the tiny kitchen with the gas stove or how our back door leads down a flight of steps into a big backyard of soft white snow, or the simple fact that it's my apartment, but I absolutely love it all!

Gwen, the old manager from the coffee shop across my old job and the new manager of the store that I'm working for, had been living in the apartment already for a week, when I got there. The temperature was well into the negative territory, so her exploration of the city had been very limited. But after I arrived, the weather cleared and the city of beer and cheese was our oyster! We discovered local farmer markets and local breweries, like Lakefront Brewery, that had magnificently tasting beer. I, myself, have never preferred the taste of beer, thinking it was nothing more than bottled piss, but the beer here is actually flavorful and delicious. I think it has something to do with the fact that it's made in smaller quantities and doesn't need to have so many perservatives to last longer.

And thanks to the magic of beer, Gwen and I have made new friends; Sara and Jack. Sara grew up in Michigan and attended the University of Arizona back home, while Jack grew up in Milwaukee and recently just moved back after graduating from a school in Atlanta with a friend who knew both Gwen and Sara. If it was a movie, a director would have deemed the moment too coincidental for the film, but this was real life, and as we all know, life is a series of coincidences. The only thing that worries me about our new friends is, how determined Jack seems to be, in getting with Gwen and how easily Gwen is falling under his ruse.

Back in Tucson, Gwen left behind her boyfriend Ron of four years. She confided in me the other night that she didn't think her relationship with Ron would work out since long distance things never do. Gwen had no idea when she would return and when they parted, she left with the idea that her relationship with Ron had run its course and that they were no longer bound to each other. Ron, on the other hand, parted with the idea that the distance between them would make their hearts grow fonder and told everyone he knew in Tucson that the moment Gwen returned, he would propose. Gwen knew about his proposal, but ignored it. The very idea that someone back home was waiting for me to return and start a whole new life with them would have sent my heart soaring. But instead, it made Gwen run - run into the arms of Jack. And after a light dinner at Stonefly Brewery with our new friends, that's exactly what Gwen did, after she asked me if I had my house keys.

I was left to walk the block back to our home. Ultimately, it was Gwen's decision on how she chose to live her life, since I certainly cannot tell her who she can and can't see, but I couldn't help but think she was making a very terrible and very irreversible choice. And then it hit me. I'm an adult. A full-grown, tax-paying, choice-making, living-on-my-own adult. No more will I wake up again in my bed and see my family at the breakfast table. No more will I come home after school or work and ask my mom what's for dinner. I'm on my own now. I'll be making my own choices, my own decisions, because thats what adults like Gwen do in the real world. I guess a part of me knew this all along, but I never fully realized it until now. Kinda like when you hear that your favorite store is having a sale, but you never realize how good the sale is until you come home with bags after bags of new clothes.

I'm gonna be meeting new and different people and forming new and different relationships with them. Some of those relationships may fade, but some will last. And from those relationships that last, one will stick out more than the others and with it I'll be starting my own family, because that's how life goes. Gwen said people meet other people during the course of their life and form new relationships and ultimately change is inevitable. It was a true statement, but the boldness of it made me realize that the lives of my friends and family would move on without me.

I'm not a child anymore. I'm all grown up. And part of me wishes I could die right now, that way I can be forever young and have my life be just as it is, no more, no less. Just like James Dean. But then another part of me wants to see what the future has in store for me. To see where I'm going and how I get there. Everyone always talks about how liberating it is to be on your own, but no one ever mentions fear. The fear of realizing everything and everyone around you is changing and I know it sounds funny right now, but a part of me wishes my mom had fought harder to keep me in Tucson and a part of me wishes I would have actually listened.

Why is it that everyone around me seems to be able to move on to bigger and better things, yet I can't seem to just simply move? How does everyone do it? How does everyone make that transition into adulthood so smoothly? Is it just a facade of keeping up appearances or what? Because sometimes I do feel like a kid who's pretending to be an adult, just waiting for the red, velvet curtains to close the stage and end the play. Yet, I know, this isn't a play. This is real life. Am I just not as ready as I thought I was?