It’s Time for Chapter 5

This morning I am on the cusp of crossing into another chapter in my life – Chapter 4 is rapidly coming to a close. Friday morning, the movers will be here and they’ll begin loading my little collection of belongings up so they can be transported to another city, another state, another…life.

Like many other people, I tend to remember my life in “chapters” or through the use of some sort of milestones or markers when transitional events have occurred. It allows me to frame my life into segments that make it easier to comprehend how I’ve arrived at the point I am now.

The end of the first chapter of my life began when we moved from San Antonio, Texas, to Memphis, Tennessee. My father had been a colonel in the U. S. Air Force, an electronic systems specialist at Kelly Air Force Base. When he decided to separate from the service, we moved to Memphis, his ancestral home, to start “civilian life.” Up to this point, I had been home schooled in a pool with a handful of other military brats. A team of mothers (military and civilian) collectively educated us on everything from our ABCs to sound decision-making principles. When we moved to Memphis, I started 7^th grade in a public school for the first time in my life. Not too long after we got there, he took a job with a major health care company in Nashville, and we relocated once again to one of that city’s more affluent suburbs. Moving twice in 18 months is pretty traumatic for anyone, but especially so for someone just entering their teens. The burgeoning relationships that I had begun forming were instantly torn from me and I had to begin anew.

The second chapter of my life is, as I see it, predicated on my blossoming sexuality and the beginning of my exploration of what made me tick sexually. This included my first boyfriend and the loss of my virginity – both of them. While my first sex with my then boyfriend was a special moment that I will always cherish, my first lesbian experience with Nikki at 15 has always been what I consider to be the single most important watershed moment in my life. It awakened me to who I truly am sexually and began a relationship that, to this day, is the most intense, most special thing to have ever happened to me. Everything I am today is largely predicated upon that experience and its aftermath. It would be hard to overstate how important and life-altering that was to me.

In the third chapter, I graduated from high school, began college, and went to work as a dancer. Graduation from high school is a critical moment for everyone, and I don’t consider mine any more or less special than anyone else’s. I went to college nearby, as did a great many of the people I knew, so there wasn’t the huge sea change for me that many people experience when they go to some far off college and begin life completely separated from those they’d been friends with in the preceding three or four years. At that point in my life, I wanted to go into some flavor of international business, traveling the world, experiencing new cultures, and rising to the top of some multi-national corporation. Wow, what a difference a couple of years can make.

Chapter four sees Nikki and I picking up all of our stuff and moving to Florida, changing schools once again, working at a new place. I wouldn’t characterize it as a spur of the moment decision, but it wasn’t too far removed from that. Over the course of a couple of months, after returning from a short sabbatical to Fort Lauderdale, we just decided that it might be good for us to move away from home and get a new start. We both liked the school we wanted to attend, knew the area, loved the culture and lifestyle of southern Florida, and knew the working environment would be much richer (figuratively and literally) for us than we were experiencing in Nashville.

It was during this period that I came to understand the role I wanted to play in life as an adult. I had spent a lot of time online in a variety of forums helping people deal with issues related to teenagedom and sexuality. As I came to realize how little people, especially young people, knew about their own bodies and how incredibly ridiculous sex education was in this country was, I reached a point where I felt that my life might best be served by finding some way to help people learn about sex. At this point, I refocused my collegiate studies toward a course that would allow me to become a sex educator. I changed my major to psychology, resulting in my having to remain in school for an additional year. Getting my undergraduate degree in psychology, though, would allow me to pursue graduate work in a field directly related to human sexuality. And that is what put me on the path I find myself on now.

Now it is time for Chapter 5, if you will. This chapter will be markedly different than anything I’ve experienced thus far. In the transitions of the previous four chapters, there was always something or someone that went through the transition with me; my parents, my sister, other friends, and, for the last two, Nikki. None of that is going to be with me this time.

I feel alone.

I feel…naked.

I’ll be in a new apartment, in a new city, in a new state, going to a new school, beginning work with a new job, and won’t have anyone I know with me to help guide me or to share and commiserate with me as I deal with the little speed bumps and road blocks I know I will encounter. I am simultaneously frightened and excited. But, to be completely truthful, I am much more anxious about this than at any other point in my life that I can recall. Not hesitant, just….anxious.

When we moved to Fort Lauderdale we had been here numerous times on vacation. I knew my way around, knew where the stores were, knew which neighborhoods to avoid, knew where the best places to eat were, and knew where to go to get the first one thing or another done. This place feels more like home to me than any other place I’ve lived.

I’ve been to San Francisco one time, for a couple of days. The city has a different aura, a different vibe, a different lifestyle than what I have been living with the past three years. I don’t have a clue where anything is yet, except for my apartment and where my classes will be held. I have to find new places to get my hair done, my waxing done, I have to find a new doctor, a new attorney. Everything, literally everything will be new.

Oh, yeah, and I know where the Golden Gate Bridge and the Pacific Ocean are! Ha!

If you’re familiar with the history of sexual progressiveness in the city, you’d suspect that I would synch up with this town nicely. And I might. But those first few tentative days and weeks I’ll be learning how to navigate around the strange city are what stand out in my mind right this second.

And I don’t think I need to explain how radical a change my new line of work will be.

As I sit here and stare at the boxes stacked up in our living room, I can’t help but wonder if, two years from now, when I get ready to move back here, I’ll be as excited about coming back as I think I will at this point. I’m pretty sure I will be, but who knows? You never know what cards life will deal you from one day to the next.

All I can do is play one hand at a time, no?

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Tagged as: Alexa, Fort Lauderdale, Nikki, San Francisco