How a Trip to My Hometown Changed Me Foreverfeatured

I usually write to share insights from my life, to shed light on something others may be going through, but today’s post is more about me. If you really don’t care about what goes on in my mind, I recommend you stop reading this right about now.

I drove down to my hometown of San Diego last weekend to see a band I was obsessed with in high school. As I drove, my life flashed before my eyes.

I began thinking of the 17-year-old me who moved away months after highschool graduation in hopes of finding her freedom, her true calling, her dream job…her life’s purpose. I looked to the ocean and asked it if I had achieved all those hopes that little girl had all those years ago.

As I got to the Bright Eyes concert, I intently listened to the same lyrics that had become the theme of my entire teenage-hood. Gosh, “How sad was I?” I thought. The lyrics danced within my veins but at the same time seemed so damn foreign. All of a sudden, I felt the tears landing on my cheeks. All those young insecurities began taking over my being. Again, I wondered: Had the hopes I dreamed up so long ago received the closure they longed for? Did I find all the answers to my questions when I moved away?

The next day, I went to a party and danced the night away. I danced like 17-year-old me would have never danced. I felt such comfort in my 32-year-old skin. The kind of certainty that no one could have gifted me at 17.

I had a lover I didn’t have to love when I graduated highschool. It was a love that felt sweet and innocent when it all started but one that evolved into something that could never fill the many voids that lived within me at that young age.

I didn’t know then what I know now – that love from another would never make you whole. That the only person who could ever truly comfort you would be yourself.

I looked through the looking glass of my past and remembered the young crazy teenage girl that I was. I still love her and all that she represents. She was so fearless, so unapologetically rude, crude, but dare I say tragically beautiful. She would scoff at these statements I am making about her now if she could have read them then…Yet, even though she felt so trapped at the time, she seems so free to me now. She knew very little pain, she had such big dreams, and she had no idea that she would almost die in her 20s on a fierce quest to find herself, to claim herself.

As the night went on, I felt emotions that I thought no longer existed flow through me, and at the very same time, a sense of complete calm and pure bliss enveloped my being.

I realized I had been dancing with the young version of me all night long. Little Baby Karen had been with me at the concert, in the car asking questions of the ocean. She had been my date on this entire trip as we visited my past. It was like a scene out of the movie A Christmas Carol: “He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten.”

I bet you may be wondering if I am okay with the path that I chose. Yes. 1000 times, yes. And you may be wondering if I ever did fulfill those many hopes I had so many years ago.

Did I finally find my freedom? My true calling? My dream job? My life’s purpose?

Spending an entire weekend with my past and present self showed me that I will continue to hope for more from my future self. That my heart will still carry much of the pain of the past but only because that is the pain that will continue to propel me forward on my journey. Because without all that pain, there would be no growth and I would forever be 17.

Did I find all the answers? Yes and no. Now I have so many more hopes, so many more dreams, and so many more purposes to realize! And all of them have so many more layers and dimensions than I could have ever imagined. I can’t wait to share them all with 17-year-old me. Maybe we can take another trip together real soon.

Love Deeply and Forever,

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