So many people seem to think to know what I need to be happy and what I need to get there. And converse is true. Staying the course has made me miserable. Once upon a time I shocked everyone in my world, including myself, when I just left home for college. I didn't even apply to any schools in my state. I won't say coming home was a mistake. But I have never been more homesick than being where I grew up and having lost family and home. It's like driving past a headstone everyday.

I do crave what on the surface appears to be the dream of domesticity. The safe harbour of family. But it may not be my path. And I have sacrificed all freedoms and came out worse trying to fit circles in square pegs. Well, I am the square peg.

And it is hard to imagine that I will never know living in any other place than where I was born and raised. I sometimes fear I could pick up and leave and end up in the gutter in a strange place. But, you don't have to be in the gutter to suffer from stagnant water.

"Seeking approval and external validation is part of the human experience, but when it comes to making a big life change, they can be hard to find. People expect you to stay how you are, to maintain the status quo, to stay the course. And if you get bogged down looking for that affirmation to make a change, you may never make it."