4 Offers & 1 Conflict in 2016: The Year of New Beginnings

I received an offer to join the PhD program everywhere I interviewed! Which is really exciting. So I am now deciding between four programs, all along the east coast: NY, DC, VA, SC. It’s exciting to picture myself in these places and consider what life would be like. It’s also exciting to imagine working side-by-side with the mentors I applied to work with who accepted me. I’ve been lucky to have found smart, supportive mentors everywhere I went!

How does this feel? It feels like everything. Not all at once, but ranging on different days. On some days like yesterday, I feel so excited about the prospect of being trained as a researcher and as a therapist and the opportunities to make real positive changes to the world that will unlock for me, I have to work hard to manage my excitement so I can focus on tasks at hand. On other days, like the day before yesterday, doubts set in in my mind. What if it’s too hard? What if I can’t handle it? What if I actually heard the inner voice wrong and this isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing? Change is scary, I know. So I embrace the fears too and keep going.

Today I feel a little sad, because one of the things that is always conflicting to me on this crossroads I’ve come to has to do with family. When I accept one of these offers, I will commit to 5-6 years of continuing to be away from my family, from my sisters. We’ll grow separately, maybe one of them will get married even, have kids, and I’ll miss all those moments.

Sometimes it’s really hard that everyone is in Greece, and I am here. It used to be easier because my family-related wounds had not healed and so at that time, being away from family was a huge plus. Now, at 30 (oh, wow, I’m 30, ha!), it’s harder. Family starts to matter more; people change, old dramas fall away. You start to wonder whether you’re wasting precious time away from family, missing out on all those moments that you could have been close to with your sisters especially, but even with your parents. These thoughts seep into my mind now and then, through the days, at random moments. Yesterday I was sitting at home thinking how much I love my apartment, how much I love the way the light hits the floorboards in mid-afternoon, giving the whole room a peaceful, yellow glow. Then I thought, I wonder if I would even notice that if I lived close to family because family would be sitting here on this couch and I’d be too busy being in these moments with them to notice the light in the apartment.

It’s difficult writing these thoughts because a) I really don’t want to be ungrateful (I am so grateful and excited about this next step!), and b) it’s a scary thought, living forever away from your family, and writing about it makes you realize that you are making this conscious decision even when you have a feeling or a longing to be closer to them. And yet, I’m really in a tough place. My alternative would be to move back to Europe. I actually thought about it, maybe applying there. But when I look at schools there, I experience FOMO (fear of missing out), and not in the lighthearted, joking way we usually use that word, but in a very real, grounded way because at this point I’ve lived in the U.S. for two-thirds of my life. And so this is my home too. I have two homes, two parts to my identity. It’s difficult. Perhaps this is every immigrant’s dilemma.

love,
me

Last updated February 29, 2016