I’m sitting in the airport thinking about how much I’ve changed in these past couple years. Oddly enough, what I am realizing is that I haven’t changed really at all- I’ve finally quit faking it. Over the years I have spent way too much time and energy trying to do the “right” thing, say the “right” thing, pursue the “dream”, and follow some prescribed path that I’ve always been told I “should” want. I can’t do it anymore. I finally reached a point where I had to recognize that I’m not that person. I don’t want those things that so many people seem to want, nor do I feel the way they do about so many things. And you know what the best part is? It’s ok. What a revelation!

I’ve come back to myself.

There’s this huge part of me that I’ve kept hiding in the depths and it’s finally bursting through. I feel more myself in this moment than at any other point in my life- honest and truly authentic. I’m thinking about my time on the beach this past week, knowing this trip here will be my last. I’m not over the beach by any means, nor am I over solo vacations, but I am over this particular trip. This place no longer serves me the way it once did and it’s time I’m honest with myself about that.

I’ve used this place for the last ten years, from the very start of my spiritual journey, but my life is taking a different path now and that requires a different place. My soul craves nature and solitude, beautiful scenery, and silence. I recognize my continued need for alone time to regroup and recharge, and I now also understand that it will have to be somewhere else moving forward. Next year will most likely find me in the woods somewhere, cut off from the world entirely and my heart sings just thinking about it. I can’t hide myself anymore and for the first real time in my life I don’t feel like I have to. It’s an exciting prospect. So now, I rejoin my world as it is, taking it one day at a time, baby step by baby step toward what feels right to me. The only thing I can do now is be me.