The First of Many?

Stories. We thrive off of them. We, as the human race, cannot function without stories. We eat them up as we eat McDonald’s French fries: at an alarmingly fast rate. Whether it’s a movie, a book, or listening to a stranger on the phone, we crave these little bits of insight into other people’s lives.

So here’s mine in what I hope will be the first of many installments. We’ll see.

I suppose the story starts where everyone’s starts. At birth. But unlike so many of the greats, the first 16 years of my life were boring. So incredibly boring. I have two wonderfully normal parents and I live in one of the safest towns in the U.S.. Is it sad that I craved more? Is it bad that I would wish I was adopted just to have some excitement? Or the possibility of a long lost twin? But no. Nothing exciting, nothing different. And that was when I began to learn that in life, if you want something new, something different, you must first incite the change. You must take the leap out of your comfort zone in order to enter the world you want to live in.

So that was when I went to study abroad. Granted, it was just for the summer but it changed my life. No longer was I content to accept the future I was handed. I wanted more. And maybe that’s where the trouble began. Maybe it was the wanderlust or the fierce desire for independence but I became more rebellious, more confident, more poised, and more outspoken. I look back at the one night in France, the first night ever, that I broke the rules. The first time in my life that I told the rules to shove it, and I went clubbing. Best night of my life. No questions asked. It was so freeing and so thrilling to walk past a bouncer and kiss him on both cheeks like we were friends. The feeling of dancing in a club underage with a bunch of people I didn’t know. I was not the girl from a few months ago. That girl would never have pulled a stranger onto the dance floor or used her dirtiest moves in between two guys while the music blared. And as much as I’m sure some people disapprove, I can’t stop loving the feeling of letting go.

This is me.