How to be young and wise

- Listen to those older, and younger who have more experience and are wiser.

Today I had the privilege to ride the bus with a nurse who is fabulous. I love her to death and her down to earth words and matter of fact ways of saying things, I love that she doesn't look at me like most people do and think I don't know anything. She loves the rules and she loves routine, and I love rules and I love routine. And she is the one nurse who I can have real conversation with at my place of employment. I wish I rode the bus with her every day.

We were talking about traveling today and my hope to move to Seattle, or Tennessee and all the dreams I have. And she told me to go. To just go, and when I came back with the I can't afford to move right after school she came back with work here for a year and then go with saved up money. When I came back with what if I get tied down in that year, what if a boy magically decides to want me, and she came back with be up front with any boy you might meet, say listen this is my plan and you can be along for the ride, or you can never get on the ride, it's up to you. And then she looked at me and said "you are young, you have dreams and you have goals, you want to do something and you have passion, so just do it. Don't talk yourself out of it, just do it." I left work today feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world, which is rare for me. As much as I love that job, it is draining me, because at the end of the day it isn't where I was supposed to be. But today I felt like it's where I was supposed to be, to have that conversation with her, and to have some of my dreams validated and not looked at like I was crazy by a "real adult."

I have a dear friend of mine who is so wise and so beyond her years. She is someone I look up to so much, she is my age, but she is so much brighter than me in life. And she gives the best advice around, and she has told me to go. I wish it was easier to take her advice, because my life would be so much easier if I did, but I seem to have to learn the hard way more often than not.

Yesterday I realized something though. I am okay. I am okay and I will be okay. I am not lonely anymore in the sense that I was. I still have lonely moments, but I am not lonely for a boy the way I was. I am not lonely for anyone the way I was. It's an empowering feeling, and it feels good. It finally feels good. I only need myself, and that is okay. And if I only have myself for the rest of my life, it will be okay.