Are you ready?

This is the most common question I faced during my last two weeks in the states.

Are you ready? I was never sure whether they meant ready to leave or ready to go but either way I always knew the answer was no. I had planned over and over again, I had talked myself in and out of the trip for six months but at no part could I honestly tell you I’d felt ready.

Change terrifies me. I had a very chaotic life. Everything changed, all the time. I stopped counting the new houses after 30. I was always the new kid in school. People dropped in and out of my life all the time, their ability to protect me changing as they changed. There was love. Always. But there was also chaos and change and confusion.

And by the time I reached 18 I desperately craved stability and routine. I desperately craved calmness. But when I got it, nothing changed. I still felt afraid and confused and chaotic. And I realized that the chaos wasn’t my environment anymore, it was in me. It had shaped me. It had raised me. And so began this journey. And four years later, after counselling and medication and yoga and routine I decided I was bored of catering to my anxiety. And I booked a year long worldwide trip around the world. 

I decided that I would put myself into the most chaos I could imagine and I would find a way to cope with it. I would have to. This is sink or swim. And sometimes I swim and I know I’m in the right place and I know this is going to shape my whole life in a new way. Some days I am so sure the answers are here. And some days I sink. I sink and sink and sink and wake in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar hostel unable to breathe.

Am I ready?

I didn’t eat for 4 days when I landed in Asia. I didn’t sleep for 5. Of course I’m wasn’t ready but are we ever really ready? Are we ever ready to face our past, to face the person it made us and didn’t make us. Are we ever ready to come face to face with our fears, to face all the things that hold us back and tell us we can’t. Are we ever really ready to face ourselves, and decide that maybe it’s not who we wanted to be.

All my love,

Maeve