"I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories...water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom."
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I wrote this awhile back. But, thanks to weird internet, I'm just now getting it posted. It's funny though, because in the end, I don't think I feel like this anymore. I'm glad I had to go.
...
Sometimes I give you thoughts that originally were recorded in my journal. But they're rounded out, shaped up into something a little prettier than that raw, sometimes gritty truth. But today, sentences straight from my journal.... About leaving, about being here instead of there.
This is where you're tested. Do you really like adventure? Or just the thought of adventure?
"I am thankful to have experienced so much, even though I am young, and have a lot more to learn, and am so undeserving.
"I wish all this could be, yet I could be home too and be changed and formed like this trip will do to me -- without leaving.
"But that's not how it works. You must go. You must let stories happen to you."
You must go. You must jump. You must stretch. It hurts. It'll hurt. And you're uprooted. But this must happen. This is how adventure happens. And you go.
But it's so so so worth it. For all the experiences you have that couldn't happen anywhere else. And by the grace of God you find that you can bloom where you're planted.
And maybe, you find, suddenly, that your roots are comfortable again.
Man, I think I've come to love this place.
...
So that's that. And now, I miss that place.