After 19 long and tiresome years of existence, I can tell you the best decision that you will ever make is to leave behind the places that have hurt you and step into the unknown.
I am by no means an expert in the categories of love and belonging. Like any young woman growing up in a world where worth is dictated by the clothes that you wear and the size of your waist, I have felt lonely, unloved and confused. As years of singleness went by without a single talking stage or question of a coffee date, I begin to feel exhausted by seeing the same people and places that I grew up around. And I stopped looking for the next best thing on my college campus.
It’s not even the lack of romantic relationships that can leave you feeling lonely; it’s the general feeling of “being on the outside looking in” that makes you question the place you’re in and the person that you are. But there is hope for us.
I am not telling you that the only way you will find love and belonging is 2000 miles away from home. Maybe it’s at another school or city, or in my case, another state. All I am saying is that the people and places that have brought you down are not worth your time and energy, so why don’t you step out and find something, someone, or somewhere new?
This last summer, I uprooted my life in Seattle and decided to move to Charlottesville, Virginia for an internship. I had family that lived there that were willing to accommodate me and two weeks after school ended, I was on a plane all by myself, excited to find something new. I didn’t know anybody, other than my grandparents, and I missed my friends and family back home. I longed for the security of my known relationships.
Exactly one month into my summer in Virginia, I finally felt okay. I loved my internship, my relationship with my grandparents was growing, and I was reading books again. I was learning so much from the people I worked with, I was eating well, and I was getting enough vitamin D.
I was happy. I was being me. I was creating my own sense of belonging, and for once in my life I felt that I was practicing some form of self-love. Was I still lonely? Yes. But I had myself, I had purpose and I had a new state to explore. And to top it all off, I fell in love.
I’ve never been one to enjoy the phrase, “you’ll find love when you’re least expecting it”… but I have to admit, that phrase isn’t wrong. A lack of expectation was definitely present for me after three years of being single. But it wasn’t just the sudden presence of love that surprised me, it was the quality of belonging that left me speechless.
This experience has taught me that not only will you find love when you least expect it, whether it be romantic or platonic, love will find you with no strings attached.
For me love appeared in the best way possible, with no game, no role I needed to play, and no category that I needed to fit into. I was just myself, and he was just himself, and then there was love. And that is ultimate feeling of belonging, is it not? It’s not just to be known and admired, but it is also to be accepted and understood.
So, here’s why I tell you to move away from past places. You will not be able to grow into the person that you want to become when everyone around you has preconceived ideas of who you are. The biggest thing I learned by moving away from home, was that no one truly knows who you are, so who else can you be but yourself? Who else can people like except for the person that you are?
That’s the beautiful thing about new beginnings, you get to be whoever you want to be. When I finally became the person that I wanted to be, I found more love and belonging than I ever did with the people back at home that only liked me when I fulfilled their social needs.
Finding love and belonging shouldn’t be so darn hard. In a perfect world, you should be able to find your people and there would be no social pressure to fit a certain role. I have spent so much time trying to be the person that others wanted me to be, that I almost completely missed the person that I am.
You don’t need to move 2000 miles away from home to belong. Finding love and belonging starts with acceptance of yourself, which is a journey in and of itself. If finding yourself means that you must create your own path in an unknown place, then do it. If you don’t, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. So, take a leap of faith and go. There’s a whole big, beautiful world waiting to see who you are.