……”Just let go, Tori, you’ll be fine!” ……”Push off and let the rope catch you.”…………Don’t worry, it can hold you’re weight.” shouted my adventurous little sister as I clung to the rock wall for dear life. But it feels so loose, what if it doesn’t work?” I shouted back as I grasped even tighter, with trembling fingers, to the rocks that now represented my hold on life.
You see, 29 feet doesn’t look that high until you’ve climbed it and realize you forgot to test your harness first. I really did try to let go but my brain signals kept being overwritten by the survival instincts locking my fingers in place. Thankfully this story does have a happy, and not very eventful, ending though. After about an hour (Okay, in reality it was probably about 90 seconds.) I let go and slowly descended safely to the ground. Of course, I failed to catch myself on my feet so the graceful landing I’d envisioned was actually me sitting on my butt. Hey, I survived, right.
What’s my point? Well, my point is that I woke up recently feeling pretty disgusted with myself for being so stuck playing the victim in my own life and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so stagnant before. I’ve seriously started to write this post dozens of times over the past few months but words have been completely failing me every time. Therefore I’ve finally decided to just jump even if I don’t have full confidence in my direction or in where I’ll land.
I sort of dropped off the radar didn’t I? Maybe I was hiding a bit, taking a hiatus from some of the things that were proving to be more harmful than helpful to me, or simply avoiding facing certain realities. In all fairness, I have been traveling quite a bit and my family has been going through a lot of the changes that come with time and moving, but that’s no excuse.
If you read my last posts about some of my travels, you’ll know I was in Florida for a bit. Since posting that I’ve been living back in one of my favorite places on the planet, North Idaho. I can honestly say that my time here so far has been more beneficial than I could have even hoped for. After those travel posts I just mentioned I shared this post about moving back and then this little post about my new kitchen and how excited I was to be creating new recipes in it……….and then………*cricket chirp*…….. So why did I fall off the face of the earth (or the blogosphere at least)? I feel you deserve an explanation.
Hmmm, so where do I even begin? Well, here’s the thing, after so long of a silence it seemed to become harder and harder to go back. The longer I waited the more I felt I needed a worthy comeback post that could validate and account for my absence.
Expectation
Reality
The title of this post is meant both physically and mentally because since the beginning of this year I’ve been struggling with some things. Along with that, something happened to me a few months ago that sort of put my life on hold for a while. I plan to tell you about both in future posts. This year has been an incredible roller coaster ride with some very good things and some very hard things but I wouldn’t change a moment of it because I believe our lives are more than irony and coincidence, and that every struggle and success is meant to shape us into better versions of ourselves, I’m looking forward to this next chapter of my life and I really want to be sharing it.
