What does "several states of mind away" mean? Does it mean a strange place or something else?

Question

In this sentence,> I met him at the coffee place where I was working after I’d dropped> out of graduate school out West, many states and **several states of**> **mind away** from the New England college town to which I’d returned.I know "many states away" means that it really far from a place, but what does "several states of mind away" mean? Does it mean it is a unfamiliar place or anything else?

Answer 1

According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, a "state of mind" is "a person's mood and the effect that mood has on the person’s thinking and behavior."

The narrator here is trying to express that now that she has returned to the New England college town, she feels like quite a different person—mentally and emotionally—than she did when she was in graduate school out West.

A more straightforward way to express the same sentiment would be something like: "I was in a much different state of mind when I was attending graduate school out West." The author's use of "several states of mind away" is meant to sound a bit more literary, and to provide a sort of play-on-words given that the narrator is also literally several U.S. states away from where she was before.