a weight lifted.

a song to set the scene // adieux by m83

It felt like my insides were plummeting to the floor, my stomach ripped from the bottom like a heavy bag of groceries.

I couldn’t believe what I read.

“Are you okay?” those around me asked. Already though, their voices felt distant, like I was falling down a well as they watched in horror from the top.

Panic I hadn’t felt in years flooded to the center of my body.

Feelings, all too reminiscent of trauma choked me as tears made their way out of the corners of my eyes.

I just couldn’t believe it.

I felt sick to my stomach.

Blind-sighted, I felt betrayed, made to feel a fool.

“Damn you! Why do I care so much?” I sobbed onto my gem’s shoulder as he comforted me.

Truly though- why did I care so much?

Lying in bed at 4am, tears streaming down my cheeks as my gem slept soundly beside me, I felt like someone had broken up with me. I felt nauseous with heartache, and foolish for feeling this way.

I thought I was done feeling this way.

I thought those days were behind me, the ones where I questioned, blamed, and doubted myself when others let me down.

In the days that followed though, I started to accept that what I was feeling was completely normal.

It’s normal to have a strong emotional response to someone leaving because for me, that’s a traumatic experience.

It’s normal to question whether I could have done anything differently because that’s how I’ve coped with that kind of loss before.

How I was feeling was normal.

Nothing was wrong with me, nothing was wrong about how I was responding, and once I realized that, I suddenly felt as if a weight had lifted.

If I’ve learned anything from my past, it was that this wasn’t my fault.

This was nothing I did wrong.

I wasn’t a bad person, a bad friend, a bad boss.

At the very core of who I am, I see the best in people. I’m the type of person who goes all in, that’s just who I am.

To live life fully means experiencing all of the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the life and the loss.

It was, if anything, another chapter in my story.

And when one chapter ends?

Another begins.

Only just begun.

a song to set the scene // my church by maren morris

I wept when the plane took off from the plains.

Big silent tears made their way down my cheeks as we made our way up into the sky.

Goodbyes are never easy. Goodbyes are never fun.

Even now, still, as I sit at my keyboard weeks after coming home, I struggle with finding the right words to say. I’m grappling to articulate just how fulfilling this particular trip was, and how damn difficult it’s been adjusting back to… regular life.

From the moment we touched down in Anchorage, to the minute I turned my phone back on, I was greeted with the harsh reality of what I left behind.

Work drama, anxiety, deepening depression, and the brittle Alaskan cold were just a few of the things that flooded me upon landing.

My vacation was officially over and I was coming down from that high.

As the woes of my day to day manifested themselves back into my daily routine, I fought with adapting back to what it was before.

I was plagued with post-vacation melancholy, and I avoided writing about my trip because I didn’t know how. In the state I was in, how could I write about a time in which I felt so happy, so young, so full and satiated?

So I thought back to my trip, and why this specific vacation made such an impact on me.

Was it the Black Hills themselves? I mean, it is a very spiritual place.

Was it the fact that I was work-free for a week? Definitely had something to do with it.

Could it have been perhaps due to all the shopping, dining, and drinking that was done? There’s some influence there.

But I think what really made this trip so meaningful was the company.

For the first time in forever (yes, I am 100% quoting Frozen), we traveled to a place I call my second home as a full family, significant others and all.

It was a first of firsts, and it struck something deep within.

I had never felt so close to my siblings, bonding over beer during late night couch sessions. I had never seen my brother light up as much as he did, or laugh so hard playing the game What Do You Meme.

I had never felt so much appreciation for my dad when he made us all put our phones in a pile for a family meal so we could really be there, in the present.

I feel like I really got to know my grandma, and every time we were over at her house, all I wanted was to know more: about her, her family, our history.

I was unencumbered with worry, and life in Alaska felt distant and dark compared to this Wild West.

So what was I really missing here, sitting at my keyboard, depressed as hell? If the company I enjoyed so much was back with me in Alaska right now, in a radius of less than fifteen miles, then do I even need to be somewhere else in order to feel happy, young, full and satiated?

When one travels, one experiences diversity and variety. Exposure to new places, faces, and encounters changes us, and we grow. We’re not the same people when we come home. Sooooo how are we expected to fall back into the same pattern, the same routine when we are inherently not the same as we were before?

I’m discovering that those feelings of happiness and satisfaction I felt on my trip (in part hugely due to my family) are within reach, here, in Alaska. I just need to incorporate and adapt to what I experienced in the Black Hills back into my life here at home.

This trip inspired me, there is no question about that. But the vacation didn’t end when that plane took off from the plains. If anything, my journey had just begun.