This summer, I thought I would change. I went on a trip a fortune teller predicted would be spiritual. She said it would give me the answers I’d been looking for, and I couldn’t have been more excited, because that was precisely why I was going.

But it didn’t happen exactly like that.

In early July, I traveled more than 2,000 miles to take a class at the University of California, Berkeley. The university opens classes to all college students during the summer, and I jumped at the opportunity. Besides fulfilling my weird, life-long obsession with attending the school —I’ve been in love ever since Ryan Atwood applied on the OC— I viewed it as a six-week self-help program.

To me, being alone in Berkeley meant finding and improving myself — or as the fortune lady said, getting the answers I desired.

With no friends to distract me, I imagined myself becoming un-lazy and breaking out of my introverted shell; I would make friends. I would exercise. I would wake up earlier. I would even get back into creative writing, as if just being in the Bay Area would turn me into Allen Ginsberg.

Most importantly, though, I would find the key to happiness. Having been in Louisville my entire life, I was tired of the whole scene. Everything my friends did — or even my friends themselves — had become too routine for me. I saw this as the cause of my depressive moods and general unhappiness.

I saw California as the complete opposite of Kentucky, and thus a complete cure.

At first, it seemed it was, and I was convinced the changes were occurring.

That didn’t last. By the third week, the novelty wore off. I started to fall back into my old habits: sleeping in until 2 p.m. and entering into my usual depressed states. There were days I didn’t get out of bed.

Once I made friends with my roommate, I didn’t seek any more. I worked out for the first three weeks, then stopped. I still didn’t write. In fact, I once watched an entire season of “Freaks and Geeks” in one day just to avoid it.

I imagined people asking me how my trip was and having nothing to say. I wanted to go home. I regretted even coming. I was just as unhappy as I was in Louisville.

Needless to say, I was cursing that fortune teller. I did see her at the Chow Wagon, after all. How could I not know she was a fake?

Somehow, though, I realized I did get answers. They just weren’t the ones I was expecting.

No, I didn’t find out what I wanted to do with my life. No, I didn’t become extroverted. And no, I didn’t get over my laziness. But I did learn to appreciate home.

Before I went to California I was bored with Louisville and tired of everyone and everything. But being away from it all made me miss everyone and everything.

I missed out on Forecastle, summer nights with my friends and lazy days in bed with my boyfriend, things I always took for granted.

It’s like the Avett Brothers song “Weight of Lies.” The lyrics say, “The weight of lies will bring you down and follow you to every town, cause nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there. So when you run make sure you run to something and not away from.”

I never believed Scott and Seth before, but I do now, because it is true. I was lying to myself. Louisville wasn’t the problem; I was.

I learned that if I don’t actively try to be happy, I will be just as depressed in California— or anywhere else for that matter— as I am in Louisville.

Only I have the ability to make myself happy, not where I’m living. I am me no matter where I am.

And as it turns out, that was the answer I was looking for.