Sometimes It Takes Moving Away To Be Able To Move On

Five weeks. In five weeks, I’m moving to not only a new city but a new country. And it’s also not just any city, it’s THE city I’ve wanted to be in since I was a kid. London has always had appeal to me from its literary brilliance to the exponential history. It was the place I had dreamed of and now here it was, I was going to live there for at least the next two years.

But what about the place I’m leaving behind? The place I’ve called home on and off for the last 8 years that’s filled with more people I care about than any other place per capita. The place I learned how to be an adult. The place I met my first love and felt my first heartbreak. The place that made me realize that my person came in the form of an extremely caring and loving best friend.

The place I’m leaving behind will always be near and dear to me, even though at times we’ve had a love hate relationship. There comes a point that either our job or our location or sometimes even our partners, are no longer letting us grow. Letting us be the person we’re destine to be.

So I’m going. I’m going but I am scared. The fear of the unknown will always be something that holds many people back. The fear of diving head first into something that we have no idea if we’re going to surface or drown. I’ve floundered many times in my life but this time I know that something great is waiting for me on the other side of the world. I’m just not 100 percent sure what it is yet.

I’ve left this place many times before but mostly when everything was falling apart. Right now for me I can say that things are good. This time I’m not leaving to escape something, I’m leaving to find something more for me.

I don’t really think it’s the leaving the place that gets me. It’s leaving the people. It’s leaving the guy friend who calls me at 7 in the morning to check on me because he knows I’m stressed out. It’s leaving my person who listens to me cry or buys me flowers when I need a pick me up. It’s leaving the super-hot guy who when he puts his hands on me my brain goes completely blank. It’s the coworkers who not only support me vocationally but also personally. It’s leaving the parents and brother who answer every late night call and know how to make everything OK.

It’s the things like that you can’t replicate.

But I don’t want to replicate them. There’s no way I’m going too. They’re always going to be there if and when I need them. They’re also the people encouraging me to go. To see what’s out there. To grow and find out where my place is in this world.

Moving is scary. Quitting your reliable desk job for your dream job is scary. Falling in love is scary. Becoming a parent (I can only imagine) is fucking scary. But it’s the scariest things that give us the biggest reward. When you realize how much you could have missed out on if you had decided to play it safe instead of going for something, you probably would always choose to jump.

So I’m scared. I’m so damn scared but I’m going for it. There’s something big waiting for me. Just like if you take that risk you’ve been putting off, I promise if you just go for it, it’s leading you somewhere amazing. All you have to do is take the first step.