It’s been 19 days since I came home and knew I needed to leave this place. 19 days just doesn’t seem like that long when you say it out loud. It doesn’t seem accurate when I know how much I’ve changed. 19 days of purging everything I own. 19 days of explaining to friends and family why I’m doing this. 19 days of doing what feels right.
I struggle to wrap my head around it all. I have tried for days to put down in writing what this process feels like. I struggle to describe how I could be so far removed from who I used to be such a short time ago.
I’m starting to believe this is true.
I’ve had people ask me “WHY?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why would you want to do this?”
“Why sell everything?”
“Why pack up everything and leave?”
“Why not just learn to be happy here?”
My answer is always the same. I’m doing this because I feel like I have to. The simple, honest answer is because I need to.
I need to find myself and I can’t do that here. There is this piece of me missing and I know I can’t find it in this place. I don’t know how else to explain it; I just know I need to go. I need to be living free of this world we create for ourselves here. I need to find what makes me happy. I need to feel alive.
There is this feeling that I’ve been experiencing over the last 19 days.
It started out small; like a little nudge at my heart. It took my breath away. It has just kept growing over the last few weeks. I’m not even sure how to describe it.
This feeling that I can’t describe overwhelms me. It wakes me up in the middle of the night. I dream about this feeling and don’t even know what to call it. It leaves me breathless. It makes my heart race. Like hearing a faint whisper in the distance, this feeling catches my attention and I’m consumed by wanting to find it.
I was talking to a friend a few days ago about how I am doing with all these changes. She sent me a link to this video….
My heart was racing by the time I finished watching it.
I don’t know the name for this feeling, but I want to live in it!
A few hours later another friend sent me this image….
My heart began racing again. I felt this pull of jealousy that my friend was at an airport and I wasn’t. That she was getting on an airplane and I wasn’t. In that moment, all I wanted to do was pack a bag and go. Go anywhere the universe decided to take me. I didn’t even care where that was. I didn’t care how I would get there. I simply felt I had to go. My heart was telling me I needed to go.
“Living your life on purpose is intoxicating”
These words keep popping into my head. That feeling I don’t know how to describe, it is ‘intoxicating’.
This feeling is excitement, anticipation, fear and a million other things all rolled into one. I want this feeling. I want to live in this feeling and never look back.
I had a family member ask me “Are you sure you want to take off? Are you not terrified about what could happen?”
I answered her honestly.
“No, I’m not. I’m way more afraid of never actually living. I don’t think about what could go wrong. Things can go wrong here. I’m more focused on what I will learn and how this will change me.”
Telling her this gave me that feeling again. My heart began to race and I knew I’m doing the right thing.
When you decide to drop everything, close a business you started less than a year ago, pack-up your life and sell most of your things you experience a myriad of emotions. I consider myself lucky because I have never felt sad or second-guessed this choice I made. I have, however, felt joy, excitement and fear. Fear of the unknown is something we are wired to notice. Our brains make us aware of it to keep us alive. I enjoy this feeling. I like experiencing new things. I enjoy not knowing what my day will hold or who I might meet. I feel alive when I experience something unknown.
I wrote a blog post last week about being at my emotional edge…… https://www.chasinghappiness.ca/2015/06/tears-tea/
Since that post I have allowed myself to feel every emotion that comes my way. I’ve allowed myself live in the moment no matter what that moment brings. I know that in those emotions I will find parts of myself.
With the ‘intoxicated’ feelings of other people’s travels, I found the part of me that craves adventure. The part of me that loves the unknown. That part of me that wants to travel to far away lands and unknown places. The part of me that wants to live out of a backpack just to see what that experience is like.
I don’t exactly know how to describe all of these feelings, but I do know that I am enjoying them. I’m enjoying learning how much I like this feeling. How much I want to live in the intoxicating feeling of not being able to catch my breath. In the feeling of having my heart race so fast, I feel like it could explode.
I can’t wait to see what feelings I will experience once I leave this place.
