and suddenly, I am out with lanterns looking for myself—

this is what I wrote for chapter three of the book I’m writing with my father— the topic we chose was “write about this season of your life”

—

“Right” is a word more easily defined as a direction than a decision. “Am I doing the right thing?” Who’s to say? My inner monologue tears me apart from time to time, hollering that I’m not going about my life in the “right” way. (this year I’ve learned a lot about giving myself grace and I speak much more kindly to myself nowadays)

I didn’t go to college, didn’t even give it a shot.

I barely graduated high school, after a few weeks long hiatus I was asked when or if I planned on returning and I simply did not reply. After some thought I decided a highschool diploma might be a good thing to have under my belt, the bare minimum, so I went back and finished it. School is one thing that everybody has always felt entitled to give an opinion on.

There have been brief periods where I’ve wondered, “did I make the right decision?” I finished high school in a blur, a semester early, and moved to Hawaii.

Not much about my life has been traditional, and the majority of each year I am completely content with the way things are. However, there are usually a handful of days, maybe two weeks altogether, that I spend in a somewhat depressive state, reeling over “could’ve would’ve should've” scenarios.

This season of life is an odd one. Not odd in a bad way, everything is “good”. (but it usually is as long as you choose to see it that way)

This season is a season of stillness. Uncomfortable stillness sometimes, I’m not used to staying in the same place for more than a couple months at a time. Sometimes I lay awake at night and my body squirms, itchy, restless over thoughts of what other versions of Me are doing right now. Am I living the best possible life I could be? Am I doing this “right”?

I’m ultimately the one that gets to make the decision of what falls into categories of “right” and “wrong” in my life, I don’t want to, nor do I expect anyone to do it for me. Usually you have that gut feeling, instincts, that guide you. I’ve always been pretty in tune with mine, and am becoming more so as I continue to grow and expand my spiritual journey.

But still, doubt creeps in from time to time, and I joke that I have a bad habit of gaslighting myself.

Anyways, I’m supposed to be writing about this season of life. This chapter has taken me ages (six months) to write, and I’m not sure why (that’s a lie, I do know why)

—

Everything has an opposite. Every action has a reaction, the yin to its yang. This world creates balance in all things, and without one we cannot know the other. We wouldn’t feel warm in 60 degrees if we hadn’t felt cold in 30 the week before.

Similarly, you don’t realize you haven’t been feeling like “yourself” until suddenly you do again. You don’t know what good, genuine, honest love feels like until you've experienced the opposite and then suddenly the universe hands you the sweetest, kindest, purest people you’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing and loving. (in my case most of these people have been right in front of my face the whole time)

It’s a bittersweet awakening when you spend time in an environment that allows you to be so totally your authentic self and you realize that is not how you’ve been living for the past (?) little while.

I used to write. A lot, actually. My main “thing”, the main title I gave myself, was “writer”. Now I’m realizing it’s not even in my instagram bio list of “things” (granted my identity is more complex than a list of adjectives in a social media bio), I haven't touched my perfect brown notebook I was sooo excited to buy months ago, and I’m typing this at a significantly slower pace and with significantly more errors than I would have a year ago.

What happened?

—

One day in January, I looked in the mirror and was taken aback. It’s not that I hadn’t looked in a mirror recently, I guess I just hadn’t really seen myself in a second. I wasn’t sure if I recognized the girl looking back at me. —

Once, a couple years ago, a woman (let's call her a gypsy– I went to her for rocks, tarot reading, and energy healing) told me the third time we met up that my eyes were like a mood ring and she noticed a difference each time we talked that directly correlated with emotions I had been feeling at the time. “They’re not sparkling today,” she told me.

— back to that day in January, looking in the mirror, I couldn’t remember the last time I felt like my eyes had sparkled.

Who am I? Beyond the adjectives. serial hobbyist, tree hugger, seamstress, designer, health nut, lover of sunsets and people and strawberry shakes… writer.

I got sad. Which I know how to handle– I’ve spent my fair share of late nights turned into early mornings screaming at the sky, asking why why why. I’ve screamed at God on top of mountains, I’ve curled up on bathroom floors and clenched my jaw and cried, and I’ve clawed into the skin on my arm so much that I got a tattoo just to cover up all the half moon scars.

I started to look back at old pictures and videos, expecting to feel anger, “why did you let things get bad again”, “look at how happy you were, this was only a few months ago, what happened, why do you do this'' but I felt feelings more similar to what I would expect to experience when my future daughter comes home to my arms after her first heartbreak.

“You deserve so much better” I’d tell her, and that’s what I was telling myself in that moment.

I sat there on the ground of my then-boyfriend's room, glancing between the girl in the mirror and the girl on my screen, she was skipping around smiling in a cowboy hat under the grand tetons. I did not feel like her.

I’d forgotten about myself, spent seven months in a relationship caring for someone else while completely abandoning and disregarding what I need and what I want. “Well, I want them to be happy, because I love them, so I’ll do what they want” and if you’ve already got a bad habit of being like that, and the ‘them’ is someone eager to take advantage of that? seven months of that will make your eyes stop sparkling.

—

The duality of man, of this human experience, is incredible.

Going through this “loss of self” while in a pretty gnarly relationship, (followed by a pretty gnarly breakup), while also meeting my biological father (especially considering I didn’t know there was any ‘meeting’ to be done-- now we hang out on a weekly basis), launching my clothing brand, and sewing my first wedding dress for a content day I hosted with my best friend, while also being homeless and without a car.

The breakdown precedes the breakthrough.

I’ve hit some low lows (who knew rock bottom had a basement) but I’ve also experienced some incredible highs.

Once you get through the initial “shit, this is hard'' feeling when you’re going through something, there's this overwhelming hope. Like, you know it’ll be hard, know it’ll be painful, but you can see the hypothetical end of the tunnel, the summit of your mountain, you can visualize the come up and now you just have to actualize it.

For me, that looked like ending a relationship that my friends had been begging me to for months. Being honest with myself about what wasn’t working– what wasn’t leading me towards my dreams and goals and the best possible life I can live.

I’ve dedicated a lot more time and energy to my clothing brand, following through on creative projects and promises I make myself, completing my yoga certification, getting back on a training schedule for running (because a marathon has been on my list of side quests for three years now).

And I’m baking again. Every week. And take it to neighbors and friends and the boy I have a crush on. It is one of my most favorite little rituals I have.

If you didn’t already know this about me, I’m a big fan of.. everything haha. I’ve managed to find a pretty good balance in it all, I’m sure as certain things grow I’ll need to re-discover that balance again and again but I’m not too worried, the whole point of this human experience is to grow. And experience.

There's a lot out there and I want to do it all.

“You look happier” friends have told me these past few months.

Everyone says I seem like “myself” again. And I feel like it. I feel happy– the best I’ve ever been, actually.

I try not to dwell on hardships, I don’t want to fall into any sort of victim complex or dig myself into a little hole of depression, but I do want to touch on the whole “toxic relationship” thing (and ruts of depression in general) for anyone who might need to hear it.

Love is somewhat of an obscure concept for me. If you know me or have followed me for a while, you know it is the thing I write the most about. I had “lover of life and everything in it” plastered on every bio of mine for years and have the word tattooed on my arm.

It’s an identifying characteristic for me– I love to love.

I am fascinated by the idea of it, the way it feels. The way humans go about loving and being loved by each other.

There’s the baseline love, the way I feel about simple things, the way I feel about any passing stranger on the street that I haven’t yet had an opportunity to pick their brain to hear about where they grew up and the way they see the world.

And then there's the crazy love. The undeniable, passionate, “in love”. The butterflies in your stomach and the “I can’t wait for tomorrow so I can experience this again” and we find that in places, things, and of course, people.

but I hope you know that the whole point of all of this (life) is not just a boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, spouse.

It is about love (and who the hell knows what that really is) but not just the romantic kind. You shouldn’t spend your life obsessing over dating, or who you want to marry, or at what age you want to have kids. We spend hours and hours getting to know other people, asking them what their favorite color is and where they want to travel. But how much intentional time do we spend getting to know ourselves?

I don’t like Thai food, I’m not a morning person (no matter how hard I’ve tried to be), I hate public gyms. I spend more time with myself than anyone else (matter of fact, that goes for everyone so make sure you are being intentional about it)– you're the only person you’ve got to deal with for your whooooole life.

Romantic love can be fun, it should be fun. Dating should be fun. But it should not be your whole focus. You are not searching for your “other half”. Sometimes when people say that I imagine god (or whatever that entity looks like to you) literally screaming “you are not HALF of anything!!!!!! you are whole as you are!!!!!!”

and If you think you deserve better, you probably do.

“Love is hard”, “people fight” I was (randomly) seeing a lot of tik toks saying not to give up on a relationship because of a rough patch, that “people give up to easily nowadays, fight for the person you want”

The person you want, above everyone and everything else, should be yourself.

And the person you choose to love, in a romantic setting, should just enhance your true self. Make things better than you ever could believe.

Love isn’t supposed to be hard, it just isn’t.

Yes, disagreements are inevitable, but I think with someone you truly deeply love and have actual potential to spend forever with, not seeing eye to eye isn’t something to scream about or get physical over.

(sometimes when I talk about these things, it feels like I’m saying things that sound like common sense. My best friend and I have had some conversations about specific situations and arguments that happened in my last relationship and saying some of the things out loud makes me sick. I can’t believe I allowed those things to happen, stuck with it for so long. Love really does make you kind of blind??)

I don’t know. I don’t know why we do the things we do, I don’t totally understand what love even is most of the time. I don’t know how to describe it. I could talk about my bare feet on warm grass, beach naps, and my good friends. Happy days, special moments, smiling ear to ear, sore ribs from belly laughs. I could talk about someone brushing my hair for me after I shower because I’m too tired and it’s too long and I never want to do it myself. But I don’t know. I don’t know why some of us are pulled toward broken, hurting humans like a magnet and want to “fix” them in any capacity possible, even when it is destroying ourselves.

So if you’re getting out of something (or need to) and beating yourself up for letting it go on so long, here is me telling you it’s okay. I don’t know why we do it but it does happen. You have a big heart.

I don’t know where the line is between a normal amount of disagreement, tension because of individuality and tension because of incompatibility.

I don’t know why some people fit like puzzle pieces (and some don't).

I do know that you’ll meet people who things just make sense with. You won’t know why- I don’t. But things will just work.

“You look happier” friends have told me these past few months. Everyone says I seem like “myself” again. And I feel like it. I feel happy– the best I’ve ever been, actually. (That doesn’t mean I don’t still have hard days, those are normal so don’t get down on yourself for struggling on occasion.)

There is no “right time”, only time and what you do with it.

I’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to decide when the right time to do something is, where the right place to be is, whatever. But I’ve slowly learned how to just let things flow. Let beautiful relationships happen organically (romantic and platonic). A couple weeks ago, I was with a friend, we were talking and I don’t remember what about, but he looked at me and said “your eyes are like.. sparkling” (he had no idea about the gypsy lady or the comment she had made) and I cried.

He was right–

I think I saw my eyes sparkle today.

coming from the girl who, at multiple points in her life, could have never imagined it– things really do get better.

i love you (forever) + i am rooting for you (always)

xx, alyx jane