On Personal Evolution

One of the strangest feelings in the world is making the decision to choose yourself. To truly, wholly put yourself before anyone and anything else. To step forward into the unknown, because you know it's what your soul needs. To understand this means leaving everything and everyone you know and love behind in order to enter into a world of uncertainty, without knowing when or how you'll find your place, but trusting that you will - you will be able to create a new life, you will be able to learn and adapt and grow.

The enormity of that decision is beginning to sink in for me.

As I come closer and closer to departing for my site, I realize more and more everyday, I am surrounded by individuals who are willing to give up everything, because they are not only crazy enough to believe in an ideal - they are brave enough to chase it.

When I was a small child, I was once sucked into the undertow while playing in the ocean. I remember being tossed about in the churning belly of the sea felt like being stuck in a washing machine.

Since I moved to Thailand, I have experienced waves of memory and grief that feel a little bit like that. I am constantly sensorially stimulated, my brain constantly shuffling through three different languages as I try to communicate, and I think my body is purging itself of all of the emotion I no longer have space for, washing everything away.

I have - on several occasions now - found myself lying on my bed, feet pointed towards the soft wind of the fan, eyes straining under the soft light of my cellphone screen, thumb hovering over the send button, waiting. Waiting and wondering and, eventually, succumbing to all of the emotions I have spent years suppressing for the convenience of the people around me. I have written extensive communications to several people since coming to Thailand, and - for the first time - I can feel the threads that have bound me, loyally, to people who honestly will likely never come back into my life pulling free.

It's a strange thing, to say goodbye to my home in Colorado, to say goodbye to my home in Singburi, to understand that my home will probably never be with some people ever again.

It's a strange thing, to move to the other side of the world – alone – to have so much faith in myself. It's strange, to feel myself changing in ways that are simultaneously so small and so enormous - in ways I didn't expect.

And I suppose that's what this is all about. The breaking apart; the rebuilding. Exposing what we've buried beneath the surface of our Selves to unearth our own potential. To sew trust where there was heartache and fear. To learn to let go. To let it be. To be. To become. To let ourselves become who we've always had the potential to be.

#travel #travelwriting #peacecorps