“I don’t want to be talked down, or talked up for that matter, I want to be free.

Whatever that’ll look like.

Where I go from this second, onward, I am not entirely sure. How do you explain to people how much you’d love to drop everything and go somewhere new? How much you’d like to start a new life somewhere, especially when nothing in your current life is actually wrong? I can’t explain that mindset, because people don’t understand it, but I have reached the point where I actually do blame them for not “getting it”. And that isn’t really fair.”

I wrote this on September 12th, 2012. Two years and twelve days ago, which is something like 106 weeks ago? It seems crazy to me that my head has been in this space for two years, and I continued to live in that head space because I truly thought that I was my own worst enemy. To live with these feelings for so long was incredibly tough, and the periods of depression and guilt I felt during that time were so deep that I could almost drown. Even now, I have to keep reminding myself that those feelings are never going to subside and that I don’t even want it to because every word I wrote above is the very core of who I am.

My last post was about the overwhelming “stress” I had been feeling, as it related to how others are handling my latest life change. It had worn on me for nearly a month, driven me to the point of shutting people down and out, and I wanted to wash my hands of their emotions. Unlike so many times before, I didn’t back down from this one, didn’t allow myself to give in and give people what they needed at the cost of myself. It might seem small, but these past few years I have given in to everyone around me too many times, and maybe because I wanted them happy or just didn’t want to deal with the fallout of their disappointment or sadness. I have given in, sucked it up and didn’t allow myself what I really needed to feel like a whole person. Change.

People often opt for change because they are unhappy, and I wasn’t really unhappy with my life. I went through vicious cycles of guilt for wanting more, but that was all on me, all internal. I have never been able to put my finger on why I feel like I need more, and nearly every blog entry in the past two years is me simply trying to explain it to myself, trying to put it into words why I feel like I need to breathe but can’t accomplish that without change. The truth of it all is much less dramatic and it is that “I am simply wired that way”. I have often thought about a time from my childhood when my dad and I would have conversations about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember telling him that I wanted to be a police lady, a doctor and a firefighter all at once, and him laughing and telling that “Sure, you can do all those things, but how do you plan to find the time?” and my (obvious) answer was “I’ll be the police in the morning, a doctor in the afternoon and a firefighter at night” as if I could do it all. I remember him laughing again and saying “okay, go do all those things” the way that parents do with small children, and me feeling like I could really do anything I wanted. I have always felt this way, this unending supply of “want” for everything the world has to offer me, and I have never seen a problem with it.

The conflict has always come later, when I take into account the people in my life who would be directly affected by my decisions and how disappointed they would feel if I just left them to pursue….well, the world. It’s been a constant internal war, a real struggle between the core of who I am, and who I know people wish I was. Picking a side has always been a no win situation for me as whatever choice I make will result in some internal disappointment. I wish it didn’t boil down to making people happy or following my heart, but it always has.

It remains to be seen whether moving was a good decision or a bad one on the ‘success’ scale, since one month is hardly enough time to gauge any level of success. However, if the calm that has descended over my body is any indication, it was an amazing decision that I would make a million times over just so I could feel this forever. Even the lonely moments that threaten to disarm me have been worth this decision, because I have finally figured out that one side effect of ‘pursuing the world’ is feeling slightly more alone when I’d like to be anything but. These past four weeks have been worth the quiet struggle of the past two years, and I feel….lighter.

Lighter and so amazingly happy.