Now I would know too much. Now I would know.

Maybe all that time it wasn't a yearning for home I was experiencing but just a yearning to be somewhere different, somewhere familiar -- anywhere but here.

There's a line in the musical Avenue Q that goes, "I wish I could go back to college; in college you know who you are." And here's the thing: It's completely over-dramatic, but sometimes I think that, since college, I don't know who I am.

I loved almost everything about college -- I loved having a purpose and a role I thought I fulfilled (quite well, if I do say so myself), I loved having a tight group of friends, I loved being at the center of a place where I never had to go very far to find something to do and someone to do it with. I loved that when I was gone, people noticed; people missed me.

College was the first time I found myself satisfied with how I looked; quite frankly, college was the first time I liked myself. Now, it's not like I've backslid into not liking myself or anything, but there is a serious quarterlife crisis going on over here in the life of Rachel, with lots of second-guessing my choices and big ugly existential questions like: What are my goals? What do I want? What makes me happy?

I always thought New York would make me happy. As soon as I get back to New York for good, I'll be happy. And it's not that I'm not happy, because I am, most of the time, and I know that in my head when I pictured it, I had a real job and my own apartment, two elements of security that I'm sure would increase my happiness exponentially. It's just that I can't help thinking I used to be capital H "girl with a big smile" Happy..and since college is supposed to be the best time of your life, sometimes I find myself worrying that, well, it was. Or that the power of positive thinking has failed me: I wanted very much to believe in my dream of working at the Children's Media Dream Job and living on the Upper West Side, when the reality looks more like settling for any elementary school that will have me and living in a closet somewhere in Brooklyn.

I don't know if a big upheaval like moving to a different state or living a more nomadic life would make me happy. I don't know if challenging myself to be somewhere different, just for the sake of difference, would make me happy. I suspect that it wouldn't, because as past experience has shown, wherever I am, I just wish I was somewhere else: somewhere familiar, or somewhere totally different, somewhere closer to the subway, or somewhere quieter, somewhere I am totally alone, or somewhere with friends nearby.

The truth is, I am trying very hard to have a Zen attitude about my life right now, to convince myself (and my parents) that it will all work itself out, that the job I get will be the one I was meant to have, that my choices are fluid, that I'm exactly as self-confident and composed as I was as an undergrad. But that infamous college bubble has long eroded; every other recent graduate in New York City is equally as fabulous as I am; no studio apartment in Manhattan costs less than $1,500 a month.

Winston Churchill once said, "When you're going through hell, keep going." But my primal, fight-or-flight instinct has always been to turn and run, hence all the hand-wringing about upheaving my life completely. Feeling "stuck" in New York City isn't the same thing as being stuck in a small town, but it's still stuck. Or maybe it's just a yearning, full of temporary frustration, to be somewhere different.

Why do I remember it as sunnier
all the time then, although it more often
rained, and more birdsong?
I could hardly wait to get
the hell out of there to
anywhere else. Perhaps though
boredom is happier. It is for dogs or
groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored.
Now I would know too much.
Now I would know.
--Margaret Atwood