Everything is different.
Not a mind blowing statement. Not even new information. I expected different, I wanted different. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard, but I think I wanted that too. The reason I turned my life upside down wasn’t because I wanted to make it easier, quite the contrary. I was scared I’d fallen into the trap of comfortability, but I wasn’t happy. Because comfortable doesn’t always mean happy. And in this case I wasn’t happy but I’d become comfortable in my unhappiness. This might not make sense to you and that’s okay, I may be completely wrong about this, and that’s okay, but this is my understanding of it right now, and that’s okay too.
I was speaking the other day with someone about the labels that we allow ourselves to be defined by. I’m not talking about the judgements others put on us, not this time. There are two stories in our lives the one that we tell ourselves and the one that’s actually happening. Too often we confine ourselves by believing the made up stories. We restrain ourselves by living under the labels that we believe define us.
There’s a cliche about travel of “I’m going to find myself”. Personally I think it’s more like I’m going to be myself. Taking myself out of the pressures and confinements, away from routines, habits and expectations and throwing myself into the chaotic and the peaceful, the challenging and the beautiful, where there’s time to breathe, time to simply just be me. Whoever and whatever I am.
There’s no need to put on the mask here, there is no reason to hide who I am… a literal example of that is that I haven’t worn make up in about 3 weeks, I haven’t done that since before I was a teenager. But the mask isn’t just skin deep, the mask I had been wearing covers much more than that. But it’s been amazing to see what can happen when I liberate myself and grant myself permission to come out from behind the mask, to stop repeating those made up stories in my head, and actually live the story that’s happening right now.
It’s strange, its new, to actually be present in the moment for days at a time, I’m catching myself and realising that I’m happy, not about things to come, not even about things that have been, no simply happy right now. I want to be in this moment.
It’s not just the jaw-dropping scenery, it’s playing in the waves of the ocean, even though it scares me, it’s eating dinner in a rice field at sunset, it’s spending hours in deep, wonderful conversation on the beach, it’s spotting fireflies dancing in the moonlight, and in that magical moment being unable to resist dancing too!
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