Change... for the better.

What is happening to me?

I have so many emotions running through my mind at the moment that I feel like I am drowning in them. I am nervous. I am excited. I am scared, yet I am feeling fearless, like I can conquer the world. I am lonely, yet I know that I am well loved by those that mean something to me. What the hell is going on?

This last year has been the hardest year for me in a very long time. I have faced fears that I never knew even existed, I have tried to retrieve my heart from the dumpster we call "love", not once, but twice, and I have to decided to leave everything that is familiar to me behind and try my hand at a new country, new language and potentially a new life. What a difference just one year can make, huh? Change.

The path of life has been a complex one for most people I think, but I also believe that we try to over complicate and over compensate when it really is not needed. Take for example right now, it's 1am in Sydney and here I am, over complicating something that should be just so easy. After all, I have made the decisions to do these things, so why I am fearful of the changes I have sought out? Is a certain amount of fear healthy? If I wasn't fearful, I guess that would make me arrogant, and some may even say entitled. I am neither of those things.

Conversations that I have had with family, friends and within my own mind, have been many of late, mainly to do with the changes that seem to be surrounding everyone and everything at the moment, a word that so often scares people senseless, change. I have seen the strongest people I know cry for fear of letting someone they love, know just that, that they love them and I have listened to the heartbreak of a friend as she confided in the silent loss of her unborn child. I have watched my own Mother cry for a brother that wants to nothing to do with her or her family, instead wants to be left alone to die in his own unspoken pain. But it was just today that I heard of someone I have grown so fond of over the last few months, tell me that one of his friends was killed in the line of fire, a job that he too shares. I didn't know what to say, my heart ached for him and for this young man's family and friends. I can't begin to even imagine what this change has brought about.

Change is fast, it is real and can happen right before our very eyes with no way of really stopping it. Embracing it is the only thing we can really do, the good and bad, we owe it to ourselves after all. I recently said "without all the pain in life, the changes, the ups and downs, I would never know what real love feels like if I had not gone through this. Almost as if it is a test of strength, a test to see and understand what it all really means." Change is good and welcomed by me with open arms. If I didn't welcome it after all, I would have no way of knowing what lies ahead of me.

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” 
― Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym