Ready for Takeoff

I sat in the aisle seat of row 20 on flight 304 from San Jose, Costa Rica to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and pulled my seatbelt as tight as possible.

I’m a very nervous flyer–my anxiety is off the charts from takeoff until the captain comes over the speakers and says those magic words: “we are now beginning our descent.” So to cope with my intense flying anxiety, I pull my seatbelt to a cut-off-blood-flow level of tightness, I keep my feet off the floor of the plane (somehow this helps me forget that I’m 30,000 feet off the ground), and I pop a couple Dramamine to make me sleepy and subdued.

As we sat at the head of the runway, the engines roared as the plane’s potential energy rapidly increased, building and building like a rubber band pulled further and further back. Waiting for the release, to feel the brakes fade and the wheels move, I felt particularly anxious. As soon as we got off Costa Rican ground, I mean the second the wheels lifted from the runway, I started bawling.

I looked out the window at my beautiful mountains and immediately felt desperate to get back to them. Maybe I made the wrong decision.

I couldn’t help but feel like it was 2004 and I was Rachel Green but I didn’t get off the plane. Maybe that was my moment and I missed it and there was no going back and that realization made my chest feel tight with sorrow.

I cried again when we got into Florida, and the made-it-there-okay text I sent my family was “why is Florida so flat and ugly.” I was thoroughly unimpressed.

From Fort Lauderdale, I continued on to Orlando and kicked off my United States Reunion Tour in Disney World with some of my favorite people, my co-coaches, doing one of my favorite things to do: coaching cheer. All feels right in my world in a dark arena with sound-effect-laden music thumping through speakers turned up way too loud.

And after a fun-filled weekend in Disney, I finally made my Midwestern return.

It’s been…something.

Honestly, it’s been wonderful in many ways to be back with my family, able to easily see friends, coaching again, and living with conveniences we were deprived of in Central America like my car or air conditioning.

The biggest drawback? I fell into a working abyss. Again.

For nearly my entire college career, I worked at least two jobs, and I always worked 12 hour days in the summertime. I had to in order to save up enough for books and rent and enough Ramen to keep me alive during the school year. So when the opportunity came along to work as a nanny this summer, I was elated that I would be able to grind really hard for just a couple of months and therein be able to afford more trips in the fall. I had done it before, I would do it again.

But I am not the same kid that prioritized the money and the hustle over everything. I’ve had that hit-by-a-truck feeling the whole summer and I don’t know how I used to do this nonsense but I will never, ever, ever do this again. My 14 hour days are physically grueling and emotionally damning. I have fucking had it, y’all.

It’s not that I hate the work. Before the trolls call me entitled or lazy, I want to make that explicitly clear: I don’t expect to lounge around an apartment in the mountains for the rest of my life without working. But I also landed my first freelance gig while down there, and between that job, a few small side projects, and talking to all of you beautiful people every week, I wasn’t exactly sitting around bored all the time.

In my last post before leaving Costa Rica, I reflected on how people in the U.S. tend to wear stress like a badge of honor–valuing whoever has more of it above others. As if perpetually burning yourself out was something to be proud of. I said how I used to be one of those people, but I didn’t think I was anymore. And I could not have been more right.

So I guess the strangest part about being back is that it feels like I’m slipping into an old life that just isn’t for me anymore, and it’s a dizzying, disconcerting feeling. Like when one of your trusty wardrobe favorites suddenly just doesn’t fit the same anymore. Maybe it shrunk, maybe it stretched. Maybe nobody else notices how it fits a little differently, but it doesn’t matter because you do. You can tell.

I mean that’s what growing up is: literally and figuratively outgrowing things. No negative connotation, just a fact. We grow and we change and it’s been hard to come to terms with the fact that I still hold the same deep love for my people here in Wisconsin, but I no longer love the place, my old lifestyle. Is that rude to think, to say? How do I describe how much I love seeing my family and friends while, in the same breath, describe how much happier I am in Costa Rica?

These waters are tough to navigate.

Thankfully, the people who truly know me and truly love me are singularly happy and supportive and want nothing more than to see me living my best life. That’s why I love them. That’s why I missed them during our last Central America stint and I’ll miss them again during this one.

I’ve been waiting all summer for Saturday, August 25th, and now that it’s tomorrow I could vomit.

For as long as I can remember, my anxiety has plagued me with this intense fear of the things I want the most. Like as soon as I admit that I want something really badly, someone or something will take it from me. Like the universe is going to step in and not allow my happiness. Now that I’m less than 24 hours away from something I really, really want to do, the anxiety bubble that forms somewhere between my sternum and my stomach has grown.

But above all of that, I am so intensely, tremendously excited to leave again. Like I said, I’m a nervous flyer, but holy shit I have never in my life been so ready to get on a plane and go.

I’m in a state of emotional turmoil that only the tropics can fix.

I sincerely have loved my time here in Milwaukee, and Landyn and I have made the most of adventuring around the state, exploring new things. But it’s time to pick up this grand adventure year where we left off. It’s time to get back to the mountains, to the birds, to my dogs (!!!)…it’s time to go home.

See you in Central America, friends.