I'm Back!

I really love vacation, and I really fell in love with the south. Among the things I discovered in North Carolina is a new (to me) band, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. They played one of the nights at the Bele Chere Festival, and I was hooked. So I came home and downloaded their album to my iTunes. Good stuff. You should really check it out. I went to visit an amazing friend of mine, Serena. I met Serena when we were both travel nurses in Seattle the first time I was here. We were both travel nurses again together last summer at the same hospital. I have since become permanent staff at Valley, and she has since moved home with her husband and step-daughter and has a new three-month old baby and is permanent staff at an ER in NC. We really are two of a kind, Serena and I. Very very very similar. We were raised almost identically. We think the same, we act the same, our mom's are alike, our dads are alike, even our past relationships are nearly identical. I have many great and amazing friends, and I love them all. They are all very wise and have many very wise pieces of advice and moments of insight, and I appreciate it more than they could know. This trip in particular though, I unlocked a key discovery from within myself. During a spur of the moment 2 hour road trip to Charlotte (long story involving multiple flight changes and cancellations) she helped me discover that I just needed to find myself. I have so lost myself in a sea of trying to be what others think I should be. And trying to be what I thought I needed to be to save and hold onto relationships with friends and more-than-friends. When the reality is that if I myself am not 'good enough' then so be it. I don't need you. So, I'm on a new mission. Operation find myself. I'm not sure how to do it or where the journey is going to take me, but I know that it will be somewhere amazing. It's amazing how instantly freed I felt when she said this one sentence. It was so simple and so true. I don't know who 'me' is anymore, but I'm going to figure it out. Ah, sweet freedom. Freedom from expectations of others who don't matter. I am who I am, and I might not know exactly who that is anymore, but I do know that I'm done worrying about what anyone else thinks about who I am.

So, Grace Potter. Was listening to the new album today on the way home, and took note of the lyrics to one of the songs, "Fooling Myself." "Maybe I feel like I'm fooling myself, either that or I'm fooling everyone else... Maybe it's hard just to let it all go, but it's goin' goin' gone right out my door." There it is. An amazing visit with an amazing friend. An amazing self discovery. It's good to be back :)