I bought a record player yesterday. I do not have any vinyls, nor do I have anything to put it atop. I probably should have waited. There are probably things more reasonable and responsible on which to spend 180 quid at the minute, considering there is no furniture in my flat.

Do I regret the purchase?

No.

One Thousand, One Hundred, Twenty-two. Eleven Hundred and Twenty-two. 1,122 Days.

There were 1,122 days between the 14^th of March 2020, when my quarantine started in Philadelphia, and yesterday. For those who read my blogs from isolation, and the friends who know the ins and outs of my life, we all know The Pandemic and Quarantine were not the only major changes that I experienced that day or in the weeks, months, and years to follow. In the midst of my first quarantine period and the chaos of my perfect little life crumbling around me, I made a promise to myself.

I promised myself that the first frivolous, life-enriching, totally unnecessary purchase I would make when I got through that nightmare, would be a record player.  So, on the 9^th of April 2023—after 1,122 days of constant change, chaos, healing, moving, and growth—I bought my record player.

I made my purchase because, after so many days of reaching for the same contentment that I felt in my day-to-day life on the 13^th of March 2020, I finally felt it again yesterday.

Do not get me wrong, I have had moments of joy. I’ve achieved some of my wildest dreams and had moments that one might only think to exist in cheesy feel-good films. I am more deeply in love than I have ever been, I have made friends and learned new languages and skills. I have spent entire weeks without a single bad thought or emotion, but it was yesterday that I felt the dust settle and I knew I was wholly back to myself.

I’ve not written anything for this platform since my Influencers blog series. Since then, a lot has happened. In the last three-plus years, I have moved four times. I ended an engagement, had my heartbroken by the world crumbling around me, adopted a cat, moved to Scotland, went on MANY dead-end dates with people whose names I barely remember, did multiple research projects, learned to crochet, learned two new languages, fallen in love, and eaten an incredible amount of haggis. Through all that, some things in my life remain the same. The Words to Describe Michelle wordcloud from my last blog is as relevant as ever. I hear many of the same words repeated now, if only in a cacophony of accents from These Islands.  To some people, my natural self is the sweetest, most helpful, and friendliest person in their lives, and to others, the exact same version of myself is a fundamentally unlikeable person.

Last week, I was confronted by a couple of people in my new life who said that I was among other things, ‘course, abrasive, blunt, and ‘clearly well educated’ (which was somehow said in a tone that was definitely an insult—I guess that is the adult version of “know-it-all’). When I got home from that conversation, I crawled into my bed and cried. After so long of being exactly myself and being told again that my mere existence was, once again, too much, I was tired and so I cried. I cried and cried and cried. My boyfriend held me in his arms as I sobbed, the same way I sobbed twenty years ago when I was really bullied for the first time in elementary school. The next day, I had a pint with a few other people from my new life, and everything about myself that the previous people berated me for, these folks explicitly said that they loved me for.

So here I am, in rural Scotland, in a village nearly as small as the town that I grew up in (and ran away from).  Somehow, despite everything, I am exactly where I am meant to be, and I think I might be exactly who I am meant to be.

I have moved to a completely new place, where nobody knows anything about me three times. I have completely started over with a new town, new community, and new career, THREE TIMES. For whatever reason, everywhere I have been there are a handful of people who decide they hate me for no real reason other than that I take up space and that I exist. However, there are also people who at once cherish my presence. None, of that is new.

On Sunday, my boyfriend and I settled onto a bench by the loch and stared up at the mountains around us. We had a check-in conversation about our first two weeks in this new place, how we felt about the community and the life we could build here; we discussed the positives and the negatives. I explained that my life in Philadelphia was everything I wanted at the time, I was perfectly content even with my small challenges and the plethora of potholes ruining the shocks in my car. At the end of each day, I was fundamentally happy with the life I had built there—I have the journal entries to prove it too!—and while this remote village in the Highlands of Scotland might not have much in common with Philly on the surface, something about it has made me perfectly and utterly content in a way I could never have expected. Regardless of the couple of people who made me cry last week, I can see a rich life of meaningful friendships and laughter. Despite their vast differences, both places bring me the peace that I have wanted all my life. He told me that he was the happiest he had ever been as well. Then, I felt the air shift and I knew the rain was coming. So, we meandered our way back to our flat.  Windswept and hair askew we entered our new shared home, with the plan for an afternoon nap, and as I cosied into the blankets, I knew this would be home for a long time to come. So… Yesterday, I bought a record player.