{What follows is largely excerpted from an e-mail I wrote last night.}
The night before I came back from England, I went down to Castle Park and sat on the edge of a little pond where some ducks and a single swan were paddling around. There was a fantastic breeze in the air that night, and I spent an hour writing in a journal (ish) and thinking about why I was so happy and content in England when I had felt largely unable to attain that feeling stateside. I was pretty hard on myself that night, and I spent a lot of the time I was there at the park wiping away the kind of tears that come when I’m brutally honest with myself. That doesn’t happen often, but … well. I’m certainly my own harshest critic much of the time, but I’m also masterful at avoiding difficult truths when I’m not ready to deal with them. Everything was coming to a critical point there that last night, though — so many emotions swirled around my two weeks away, of course, and the quiet time I had while in the UK was absolutely critical to my finding a kind of inner peace that, honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever found.
What I wrote that night, what became the stuff of my “British epiphany,” is that I have spent too much of the last two years waiting for someone to come into my life, someone I can share the stuff I long to share with someone else, and as a consequence have failed to fully seek out the things that I want to experience. This is bad. While I was in England, I did exactly those things that *I* wanted to do, without worrying about whether anyone else wanted to or whether I could find anyone to join me. That was, of course, a consequence of my being there solo and not really making an effort to be Ms. Social Butterfly abroad… but the quiet time, the solitude, the alone-ness that I found while seeking out experiences and adventures that I knew would make me happy? It reminded me that I tend to have a rip-roaring good time when I stop worrying about other people and just follow my own instincts, my own passions, my own desires. The thing is, I’d clearly rather share amazing experiences with other people; seeing a band play, going on a hike, taking in a play, or admiring a beautiful piece of artwork… these are all things that are better experienced with someone, and so, recognizing that, I feel like I am often more concerned about finding the right companion than I am in just seizing the opportunity. I have to stop that. Now.
So I went to Atlanta this weekend. I spent three hours at Ikea, a portion of which was spent hanging out with my friend Daric and his three sons, but a large part of which was just me wandering around and soaking up (with squealing glee) every square inch of that store. It was me having my favorite Mexican food ever (man, how I miss Texas sometimes!). It was me, driving in the car and singing at the very top of my lungs along with songs that are a part of my past, a part of my soul.
Clearly, I want to share these things with someone. But more important is that I actually do them, regardless … for me, for my own happiness, just because I want to.
I feel like I’ve come into a very different place in the last few weeks. I don’t know if you can see it or sense it, but I sure as hell can. I just feel like I’ve made a choice — a really important, conscious decision — to be fully in control of my own life. Maybe you’ve always seen me that way. Or perhaps you can sense something has shifted in me, too. Either way, though, there’s something palpable and different. And I (really) like it.
I feel happier, more content, more at peace … I feel all these things by orders of magnitude more than I ever have before, and it is fucking amazing.