Since getting back from my travels in Europe, I feel like I've lived 3 different lives, and 3 different versions of me have come and gone. The version of me that had to readjust to an old and outdated society, realizing that I'm not who I was and I need to accept a new me. The version of me that was starting over, and starting a new life. And then the version of me who is brave enough to learn a new skill and start a new career. And it feels like a lifetime ago. I'm now becoming the version of me who sees pain as something to be embraced. Pain won't kill me. Pain doesn't weaken me. It's okay to be hurt, and to be in pain. But my world isn't crashing down around me, I'm not dying, and I'm no longer hyperventilating on the bathroom floor as a result of difficult feelings. My feelings have a lot less power over me these days.
... Dot dot dot because the above paragraph was written a month short of 3 years ago. I don't know why I stopped or why I didn't return to complete the post, but it's likely because I wasn't finished doing the living I needed to do in order to finish it. But every single word of it rings true still. And it continues to ring with truth every day. Only instead of 3 different lives, I've lived about a dozen. The solo travelling bit turns out is only a single piece of the very complex puzzle I've been putting together my whole life. It's a single piece but its one of the most important pieces.
Since I began this post almost 3 years ago, I have become confident, emotionally intelligent, and someone that isn't pushed around by said outdated society. I process pain differently now, and realize that which hurts me is not mine to keep. I have come to embrace a peaceful life with little to no distractions of the frivolous kind. And by frivolous, I mean romance and games that smaller people enjoy playing with the vulnerable and desperate. I have become the strong person standing firm and assured in my own skin that the person 8 year old me, 16 year old me, 24 year old me, and 30 year old me has always longed to be. But is there a point which we should stop focusing on becoming and just be?
I've become the person that my younger self so very much needed all along. I've become someone to be proud of that dances along to the music in my head and creates my own rhythm. I am inspired and I strive to inspire.
Living my life on my own terms with no apologies (clichéd as fuck I know)
AnneMarie
