I’ve just realized that today is a milestone. It was exactly five years ago today — August 4, 1999 — that I left Charlottesville, Virginia for good. After four years of college, one year of working at UVA, three years of law school, and a final summer of studying for and then taking the New York Bar Exam, I packed up all my stuff, accidentally dropped a bottle of black shoe polish in the street (thereby splattering black polish all over the asphalt), hopped into my car and drove back up north.

Since then, I’ve come out to my parents; worked in Hopewell, NJ, and then in Newark; lived in Montclair, Princeton, Franklin Park, and Jersey City; started a blog; made new friends; experienced New York City more than ever before; made a few attempts at relationships; and now spent the past 10 months with a wonderful boyfriend.

We arbitrarily divide our lives into stages. I had my growing-up-in-New-Jersey stage, my Japan stage, and my Virginia stage, and now I’m exactly five years into my post-Virginia stage. Sometimes it seems like my New York City stage, but it’s hard not to relate it back to my years at UVA. I wonder if this will ever completely stop feeling like my post-Virginia stage.

At any rate — Happy Five Years, me.