Travels
Im leaving to Argentina in 14 days 21 hours!!
i keep thinking about how this isn’t the life i imagined for myself. not even close, honestly.
when i was younger, i thought by this point everything would make sense already. i thought i’d be married by now. married to her, specifically. i pictured some quiet domestic life that felt steady and safe and permanent. i imagined grocery shopping together and sharing an apartment and building routines around each other. i thought love would be the thing that finally made my life feel settled.
that isn’t what happened.
instead life got messy and painful and confusing in ways i never expected. sometimes it dragged me through years that hollowed me out before i even had the chance to understand who i was becoming. there were so many moments where i genuinely thought things would never get better for me, where surviving was the only goal i could manage.
and yet here i am, packing for argentina for a study abroad program through my university. and that sentence alone feels insane to type because there was a time i genuinely never thought i’d even get accepted into a university at all.
i spent so many years thinking i was behind everyone else. thinking maybe life just wasn’t going to happen for me the way it seemed to happen for other people. everything always felt harder than it should’ve been, and for a long time i carried this quiet fear that i just wasn’t capable enough to build a future i actually wanted.
but somehow im doing it.
and i can’t help but laugh because i remember watching Belly “discover herself” in Paris during her study abroad in The Summer I Turned Pretty and thinking it was kind of ridiculous in that dramatic coming-of-age way. like okay girl you went abroad and suddenly you understand life now? and now i’m the one about to leave the country hoping maybe something inside me shifts too. maybe i come back softer. maybe lighter. maybe just more sure of myself. honestly it feels a little embarrassing to admit because i used to roll my eyes at that storyline so hard but now i get why people leave home and come back different.
i don’t think argentina is going to magically fix me. i still struggle a lot. i still overthink and carry old sadness around with me more than i should. but i’m handling myself differently these days. i’m kinder to myself. i let myself dream about things again. i let myself believe i deserve good experiences instead of feeling guilty for them.
and that alone feels huge.
because despite everything, despite how hard life has been at times, i kept going long enough to become someone i’m actually proud of. someone who books the trip. someone who got into university after believing they never would. someone who can look at their life and admit it didn’t turn out the way they planned, but still see beauty in it anyway.
i think gratitude feels different when you’ve spent years just trying to survive. happiness becomes quieter. smaller. it’s sitting there realizing you’re finally living instead of only recovering.
and god i’m thankful for that.
thankful for every version of me that kept trying even when they were exhausted. thankful that all the work i put into healing and rebuilding myself is finally showing up in little ways. thankful that i get to see new places with new eyes.
argentina feels bigger than a trip to me. it feels like proof that life kept going after all the moments i thought would break me for good.
and maybe i’m still becoming someone. maybe i always will be.
but for the first time in a while, that thought feels comforting instead of scary.
