My Year

2014 was my year. 2014 was the year I left everything familiar behind, and took off with nothing but a backpack and a passport and a desire to explore the world. This was the year I truly got to know myself, inside and out. No one else on earth who knows exactly what I've been through, the good and the bad. It belongs to me and only me.
I am leaving 2014 a different person than I was when I started it. Not because I've changed, really. But because I have learned what I am capable of. What I have always been capable of, but was too scared to ever test. I no longer use the phrase "I could never do that" because I can do anything.
While many of my friends back home are falling in love for the first time, learning the dynamics of relationships and compromise, I was learning about myself. Every time I had a hard day, it was a day to remind me what I am made of. The only person I know will be with me every second of every day of this life is me. So I learned to really love myself.
I met amazing people along the way and together we had incredible experiences and those times will always belong to us no matter where in the world we end up. I don't know where I would be without all the people who helped me along the way, loved me, or simply shared space with me. I met people who helped reveal my own shortcomings to me. I met people who lifted me higher than I ever thought possible. I met so many people just like me who reminded me just when I was starting to doubt myself, that I'm not crazy. I can do this. And I did.
2014 was my year. It was a year of adventure and self discovery, excitement and sometimes terror, heartbreak, but more than that love. I am grateful for every lesson and every opportunity I've had this year. 2014 will always belong to me.

Incredible India

I didn't love India because it was easy. Quite the opposite. India stared into me and made me feel naked in ways I didn't know I could. It expertly probed at my soul and found the most sensitive parts, poking at them as if they were only bruises on a peach. It made me feel uncomfortable in ways I resisted at first, but the longer I spent there, the more I learned how to accept. The bruises gradually toughened.
I learned things about myself. I had always thought myself a very independent person. I was always proud of the fact that I needed no one to be happy. India showed me a sort of community that I had never known existed. It was as if I had been missing it my whole life and never even knew what it was. It filled a space in me that I didn't know was there until it wasn't. I know now that needing people isn't something to be ashamed of.
India revealed my shortcomings to me as casually as a friend telling me about their day. I learned to read into my feelings of frustration and helplessness and to dig to the root of them. I know now that time is an invention of humans and it has no importance. India taught me that.
I would sometimes feel as though India was scrubbing me until I was raw. Standing in the busy streets, covered in a layer of filth, I never felt cleaner. More exposed. As if the layers covering my soul had melted away and my true light could finally shine through, unobstructed.
And I felt accepted. I was stared at with my blonde hair and fair skin. Everywhere I went, I felt eyes. Normally, in other countries this made me feel uncomfortable, as if I was on display. But the love in the heart of Indians made it something different. I felt vulnerable as I had never felt before. But I felt safe.
For me, discovering India opened a whole new world. And it revealed a whole new me. I know that this me was here the whole time, guiding me along from her hiding place deep within. But India was the place I finally met her and we finally became one. I love that land with my whole heart. I love the people and the smells. I love the sounds and the colours. But most of all, I love the person India makes me, and there is no love stronger than that.