You know how sometimes you smell something, and suddenly you’re transported to a place you’d forgotten?

Like when I think about Javi…

Obviously I know I love(d) him.

I even know I loved him fully, recklessly and probably more purely than is ever possible once you’ve been really heartbroken or broken hearts.

But as soon as I smell orange blossoms, which were blooming in Sevilla when he first began his nightly serenades under my balcony (True story! But he didn’t actually know I was there listening, because of the orange trees.)...

That’s when I really feel it.

All of a sudden I’m standing in his closet, fingertips brushing his shirts, wondering how the hell I’m going to survive the next day when I leave him and fly back across the Atlantic to continue my studies.

Which is just like what happens when I’m talking to someone and they tell me about how angry they’ve become with themselves (or how ridiculed they feel by other people) because they can’t make up their mind.

It’s not that I forget there was a period of my life when it was painful to be an abstract thinker who had no idea she was an abstract thinker and therefore no understanding of why it was so hard to “just pick something!” and “get it together!” like other people.

But sometimes something about the voice of the person I’m speaking to makes me feel as if it happened yesterday.

… That look in her eyes when she smirked and said, “Oh, you’re on to something else again now?”

… The weight of looking through my college’s alumni newsletter to see allll of my classmates (so it seemed) moving forward steadily with careers they’d talked about in college.

… The irrational despair when the $10 palm reader in the West Village told me, no, she couldn’t tell me what I was supposed to do with my life. (As if that was my last hope. Done. Nothing left to try now!)

Looking back, it’s so easy for me now to see what nobody ever told me…

My indecision wasn’t all bad.

In fact, in some ways it reflected really well on me.

So if there’s something in your life for which you’re not quiteee at a decision point, I want to be the one to say it to YOU:

Congratulations.

Among other things, it means you’re demonstrating the ability to think strategically.

And if you’d like some more compliments (because, ummyeah!), check out these 5 great things your indecision says about you.

And finally, this:

Your uncertainty doesn’t have to be that agonizing. You just need to start by viewing it as something positive and something that can be solved.

Here’s to our greatest traits,

Jenna

P.S. I didn’t leave that day :)