Wild

How beautiful you look in the pictures and the post.

To be adventurous. To escape. To be found. To be free.

Gone Girl

I want to scream from the mountains tops.

I want to begin again.

To travel alone. To think. To breathe. To discover who I am when I am all that I have. To simply listen to MY voice.

"You deserve to be completely found in your surroundings not lost within them" - Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

When I read that quote the other day it felt like a pretty, niche summary of my life these past few months—that surrendered an answer to my feelings of emptiness since, well, the last 18 years of my life! I was lost. Physically, since going off to university, I had come to make this place look like some version of where the new me belonged, the only thing thing was there was nothing new about me... or my pain. I couldn't help but wonder, why the university, the new friends, the entire redesign of my world made me feel just as lost as I did back where I had come from—in fact these feelings were far from newfound. In fact, I had always had this need to blow my life up, pick up one day and start over—I would dye my hair bleach blonde—naturally, flip a table in class and walk away never to hear from these people again—I have always considered myself this wild, spontaneous free spirit, but somehow, along the way, I have imprisoned myself. I have settled for the right way instead of my way. I have settled for dreaming of the wildflowers, instead of becoming my own.

I know someone wants me to reduce this to a need to run away. I think we all feel like we owe it to someone or something to stay and try to fit. We feel bound to the people and the places we are told hold security and stability. But anyone who knows my stance on cross country... knows I do not run!

What I know is this: fear has crippled me into this shell that is too afraid of being seen by the world, that she has manipulated a smaller one around her.

But now...

I want to jump off the boardwalks of Carolina—and dive deep into a lovers lake.

I want to walk the PCT and feel that famous wind everyone is always talking about—sleep under the sun and wake to the sounds of crickets—nature soundly reminded of my solitude. Alone in the wilderness of California.

I want to make it to New York and get lost in the big city.

I JUST want to walk the same lands, footsteps away from dreamers alike, if I can JUST watch the same sunsets, dazzled from the heights of the Griffith Observatory—Mount Hollywood, I will be okay.

And why shouldn't I be able to?

After months of debating what to do next, I was left with two thoughts...

Who would I be if I stayed? Who could become if I go? And honestly, the only thing that scares me about doing it, is not doing it. Not betting on my wildest dream. We all deserve our way out.

As it has been written, "I’m a free spirit who never had the balls to be free.”—Cheryl Strayed, Wild.

... Until now!