I decided today I need to travel more. I need to get out of the place I live in because I’m not really happy here. I need to see the world, so I am going to make a goal to take one trip to somewhere, anywhere – a year. I’ll go, even if I have to go alone. A part of me wants to go alone anyway. I want to develop a resolve within myself, a confidence I feel I am lacking. I have always been self-sufficient but there is something inside me that feels weak, secondary, cast aside.

I sat in a car looking at the ocean last night. It was dark and I was distracting myself from talking about what really matters with searching for a song to play on the stereo… I came across the live recording of a show I played some four years ago and listened.

‘This was me before I moved to California, before I moved here to Rhode Island,’ I said, looking away into the grey of the fog. My eyes searched for the peaks of the Newport bridge and the tiny, circular lights that illuminate them. ‘I don’t sing anymore’.

My friend, who was sitting next to me, turned and said ‘Where did she go? This girl, she’s all locked up inside and she never comes out any more.’

I didn’t look at him because I knew he was right. I used to be fearless, determined, and sometimes a little out-of-control, but I did things. I went out and did things. Now, now I am settled here with a job, in school, half as happy as I was when I had less plans in motion. Maybe it’s the waiting, the waiting to finish school, to quit the job I loathe, to walk away from this place that has turned me into something I never wanted to be… weak… secondary.

In the same moment as I felt the sting of his statement and I looked out into the dark of the evening, I resolved to find that young girl singing those solemn, melodic songs and remind myself that she is still a part of me, alive and living well.