Since youth, I have felt incorrectly positioned. Temporarily lost, if you will. There was something, or maybe everything, that grew viciously restless in me as I became old enough to start coming into my own. In the town in which I grew up, I could do the same things, talk the same way and go through the motions in order to coexist with those around me but, somehow, the pieces never quite fit. They felt too snug as if they were being forced to squeeze into where they were somehow misplaced.
I remember fantasizing from the time that I was (a very wanderlust) 15, of all the sites there were to see and all the people there were to meet outside of the five-mile radius I'd been fixed in. I had a constant yearning for more, even though I wasn't sure what that more even consisted of just then. On top of my grandiose ideals of the bigger and the new, tainted by toxic relations and painful experiences, my daily life was littered with the memories of yesterday that I was so ready to leave behind. Suddenly, college came around, and I knew that it was finally my time. My time to escape, to seek more. At that point in time, my internal compass was pointing "anywhere but here," which didn't quite help pinpoint the exact location that I felt I should be. I had dreams of bustling cities and immense culture shifts, so naturally, I was drawn to cities of numerous hundred thousand. More as a whim than anything, I threw the idea of a city outside of my regular parameters. For no specific reason, in particular, something deep inside of me attracted me to the idea of this place. The feelings were too intense to ignore, and off I went.
One year later, I feel more genuinely me than I have ever been allowed to be. A new sense of self is developed continuously as the days go on. To me, this place signifies transformation. I wake up every morning and see a brighter day and a new adventure in becoming the me that I was always meant to be. The sunrises and sunsets feel as if they are here just for me, welcoming over and over as if it's the first one I've ever seen.
No matter where you are at in life, the most beautiful realization is the ability to start over. Until I came here, I had no idea who I was or who I truly wanted to be. Until I came here, I had no opportunity to even find out. There's one thing to be sure; the universe sends me what I need, exactly when I need it, and even when I'm not even sure what "it" is, just then. After a lifetime of feeling like an outsider in a place I was supposed to call "home", there is no greater gift that I could ask for than to simply feel that I belong, exactly where I am.
Now, I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Here, I am truly home.
