Freedom on Top of a Mountain

I needed something. SOMETHING. I had the urge to fly, to run, to disappear. As cliché as it sounds, I needed to find myself. The me I used to know and the me I wanted to be were buried under life and had been for a long time. Once upon a time I was audacious, outspoken yet kind, unjaded by life and lived daily like I was still 8 years old and searching for the next adventure. My soul was hollow; my essence was merely a vapor of who I had once been. I had to go, but I had no idea where. Thus, my search began.

Somehow my search found me booking a room, researching flights and feeling excited. It was as if Google was more intuitive about me than I was. The fact that I was feeling anything at all reminded me that I was still alive. It had been so long since I had felt anything that the moment was overwhelming. The numbness I had built up from life disappointment and self loathing was beginning to loosen. Little did I know that so long ago when my spirit left me that I would find it again on the other side of the world.

I had not traveled much in my life up to this point and certainly never that far. Yet here I was planning to travel alone over the course of 27 hours, through many time zones on 3 flights just so I could clear my head and attempt to recognize some resemblance of who I used to be in order to find who I wanted to be. It was, without a doubt, the most spontaneous decision I’ve ever made.

I found myself in a place of desperation. A place so desperate I had to run away from life for a moment. Though the…