To Be Alive

This time last week, I was struggling. 

Writing to you now, I am on the other side of the breakthrough I couldn’t see, but trusted was coming.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been traveling around the East coast, where I lived before I was ALIVE. For most of my life, I had no faith, no self-trust and no will to live. I thought I was broken with no chance of repair. I hadn’t tasted true intimacy or unconditional love. I didn’t know my soul. I hadn’t discovered how powerful, how deep, how sensitive, and how worthy of love she was. 

I’m currently visiting New York City, where I lived from 2012-2018. I was miserable when I left. Suicidal, working in a field I had just gotten a masters in, but no longer had the mental or emotional capacity for. I had already been on antidepressants and in therapy for years, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, keeping myself alive on obligation to others and the imagined peace of being dead. 

In 2018, I moved to Los Angeles as a last-ditch effort to see if happiness was possible. I didn’t have faith, but there was nothing to lose. 

Fast forward to 2023. 

My five years in LA gave me exactly what I needed. Happiness, healing, spiritual connectedness and purpose in a deep, unshakable way.

But this trip to the East coast resurfaced the depression I worked so hard to heal.

On Monday, I went on a walk through one of my old neighborhoods and stopped in a spiritual store. I love them. I can’t get enough of them. Let me touch all of the crystals. Anyway. I decided to get a tarot reading.

It was a much needed affirmation of what I already knew. I was doing the right thing. I was on my path. And the emotions I’m feeling are guiding me. They’re telling me what supports my aliveness and what does not.

My soul knows that my next chapter is in Mexico, but I’ve been trying to hold onto the partnership I built in LA.

Unlike leaving New York in 2018, there’s a lot to lose this time. So I’ve been keeping one foot in as I poke the other out, doing everything I can to see if it’s possible to have both.

I still don’t have the answer to that question. But I needed to be clear about one thing.

My soul knows what it needs to be alive, and I’m not willing to sacrifice that.

I had a difficult conversation with myself. And I had a difficult conversation with my partner. Setting that boundary freed me to lean into the uncertainty of the present moment. To weather the emotions. Trust myself to listen. And enjoy the ride.