Chasing Her

It really is all her fault that I’m in this mess. She was just too unforgettably young, too reckless, too dramatically optimistic. Her plans were too big and her heart too unyielding. She was a force. She was limitless.

But now, I can’t find her…and that haunts me. She lingers in that tiny place of uncontrolled thought when drifting off to sleep or just waking from it…and while fairytales might have you believe that’s the place where fairies meet you, I assure you, that’s not my experience. It’s just me and her in those moments. Me and her. Where she reminds me of what we were supposed to do, and accomplish, and be. And in those moments of me and her and the reminding, my chest clenches and I squeeze my eyes shut to block her out…because she’s right.

This isn’t what we thought we wanted. This path isn’t the one we thought we’d go down. But more than the crippling feeling of failure, which has always been my greatest fear, I realize every time that I just miss her. Squeezing my eyes shut may silence the momentary madness, but it doesn’t remedy the real issue: I miss her. I miss everything about her.

The problem with missing her is that she’s not technically gone…she is technically still very much here. She was me and I am she.

I just grew up, and it just…happened, seemingly without my permission and somewhere along the way, I lost her. I lost her while adding lines to a resume, and researching 401ks, and trying to understand crypto, and paying off cars, and freezing eggs because we were running out of time.

It felt as if I woke up one morning, drank my coffee, and realized, rather startlingly, that she was no longer there. The girl who took her dad’s car mudding in a rodeo arena, and moved to China on a whim, and packed up for a new city every two years, and never dated but auditioned, and danced, and baked deserts that she actually consumed without guilt or fear just…stopped being part of me.

So, to avoid losing her completely, I’m going to run after her. I am going to chase her down.

As a magnificent and rather dramatic first step, I’ve put all my stuff in storage and will be Airbnb hopping around the U.S. for a short while. This feels like a move she would recognize and while my adult brain is panicked about storage unit costs, what will happen if I break down on the side of the road, and how lonely I might be, I can’t deny the flutter in my heart…the excitement that comes from ignoring the adult in me for a little bit, and simply taking some time to chase down who I used to be.

Part of the journey also felt like it should include writing, as that used to be so important to me. So here we are, welcome to brave & crazy. I’m so glad you’re here and am excited to see where this all goes.

P.S. Big thanks to my kid sister for the AAA subscription. That really helps the adult brain take a friggin chill pill about being stranded on the side of the road. 😉