It's been nearly a year since I boarded a plane from Vietnam to Indonesia. Nearly a year since I had to change my entire life to accommodate an injury that still nags me with it's resistance to fully healing. I am haunted by the ghosts of who I was.
I had plans a year ago. The big plan was to do some surfing for charity in Indonesia and then travel to Fiji to volunteer at a surf camp, helping a local start a business to better his life and that of his family. Then, I became the girl making calls to my best friend, "Please please get me off this island." I became the girl that limped back and traveled around the U.S. in search of a place, any place that I could call mine. Bouncing from house to house and then from place to place in Vegas and never feeling like I was home. I re-started my PR work, founded a new business, and am working on another one. I moved to a tiny town in the mountains, settling for the first time in years, as much as I can settle. And yet I am haunted.
It seems that who I believe myself to be needs to catch up with who I am now. It comes gradually, a shift in the labels I put on myself. I know those labels, know them well. And sometimes with labels, the sticky backing sticks a little longer than it's supposed to. Peeling off gradually through many washings of the mind. I never thought I would be back here. In that place between the past and a future I can't define. Perhaps I put too much pressure on myself. Perhaps it's OK to look at myself, look at all I've done, and say to myself "It's going to be OK. You don't need to have changed all that much through your adventures, you don't need to define who you will become by a past you miss so much."
As I look at the snow covered slopes of the town I call home now, I can't help but be excited for the coming season. It's been tough, moving to this town. I used to move so freely, starting over in new places, a whole world in front of me. Because of the friendly ghosts of my past, I thought this would be easier. Maybe it's not that I'm weaker, maybe it's that I am coming to realize that roots are not easy to put down and that I to be honest, I don't even know if I want them. To be anchored to one place has always been a sort of death to me and I've been trying to force it. After all, aren't anchors there to keep you safe and secure? Right now that sounds like a good thing.
And yet, as sure as I know the back of my hand, I know that I will leave again. I can't help but always leave and to be honest, I love the ghosts of my past that are defining the future for me, telling me that I am not this girl. Then again, perhaps I can become that girl. Perhaps I will always be searching for home, a place that I will come to and immediately feel like I belong. I may find that in a different city, in a different country, in the arms of one that I least expect. And I will continue to be open to all that is brought into my life. I will continue to follow my heart, even when it doesn't know what it wants.
I don't know what I want.
I am haunted by ghosts.
Lara
