Adventure Awaits...

The day before leaving home is best described by explaining the way your stomach feels. Sure, your heart is on hyper-drive and your mind is desperately scrambling away, but the worst feeling tends to metastasize in your stomach.

It's like mutant, super-powered, X-Men worthy butterflies are rioting in your stomach. 

It's like that sudden drop on a roller coaster when you're not sure if your glasses will stay on your face or not.

It's like when you realize you've just locked yourself out of your house. 

Truthfully, though, it's just nerves. You know it's natural, but you can't help but curse the fact that you're so damn jittery and your stomach is so damn weak. It's just worrying over the possibility – the maybe.
Maybe it'll be okay. Maybe it'll be awful. Maybe it'll be phenomenal and the type of shit they make blockbusters movies about.
Either way, you suck it up. You wipe those years away, you square up your shoulders and you tell the world to bring it the fuck on. It's not bravery - not really. It's just an inability to do anything else. What can we do but accept that which we are given? 

You come face-to-face with your anxiety, and you hold out a hand. You squeeze it tight, you take a deep breath, and you walk onto that airplane like maybe, just maybe, it'll all be okay. Maybe you won't cry yourself to sleep the first night there. Maybe you'll make new friends. Maybe you'll find a new version of yourself - one you'll learn to love even more because this newest edition of you is better, braver, stronger and more experienced. 

You inhale; remember all the things you love that you'll have to live without; all the things that you'll learn to love. All the new pages in your story and the faces in your imaginary photo album.
You think of all these things and then...
You exhale.
The world is waiting, and it'll all be okay.