The Return, the Risk, and the Rewrite
The unintentional wisdom gained from my attempts at personal reinvention.
PART I - THE RETURN - Back to Old Stomping Grounds
They say you can’t go home again, but that’s not entirely true. You can, it just feels like reading a book for the second time and finding the characters have gone and rewritten their parts when you weren’t looking. Growing up, my hometown felt like the only place where the “me-est” me could possibly exist—where every street corner held a memory, every breeze carried a laugh, and every sunset felt like a personal performance.
Leaving felt like an act of rebellion, an assertion that there was more to me than the outlines of this familiar landscape. The move was my declaration to the world: Here I am, watch me find myself. But the world, with its infinite wisdom, decided to throw one of its many curveballs. New city, new faces, new everything—it was exhilarating until it wasn’t. The novelty wore off, leaving behind a daunting question: Who am I, if not the person who belongs to those streets I know by heart?
So, I came back, tail tucked, feeling every bit the prodigal son sans the celebratory return. The failure was not in the coming back but in thinking that I had to leave a part of myself behind to find the rest. My hometown greeted me with open arms and many judging I-told-you-so looks. It was comforting and suffocating, a reminder of both who I was and who I was trying to be.
But here's the thing about pit stops: they're not endpoints; they're just part of the journey. My stint back home was a detour, not a derailment. What I was really doing was regrouping, armed with the knowledge that my hometown's gravitational pull wasn't strong enough to keep me in orbit forever. It was my chance to refuel, to gather the pieces of myself I’d left scattered along the way. I realized that the “me-est” me wasn't tied to a place but to the journey of discovery, to the act of leaving, returning, and setting out again.
So now, with a renewed sense of purpose, I’m venturing out once more, carrying a little more of my hometown in my heart than I’d anticipated. Not as a badge of failure, but as a compilation of my becoming. I can understand now that finding myself isn’t about distancing from where I come from but about embracing the entirety of my experiences—every stumble, every triumph, and every return.
The real discovery is this: We aren't defined by the geography of our upbringing but by the paths we dare to take. Our true selves don’t emerge by staying put but through the courage to move, to explore, and yes, even to circle back when necessary.
My journey hasn’t made me someone new; it has revealed the depths of who I’ve always been, sculpted by every place I've called home, however temporary. And in this unending voyage of self-discovery, I've learned that the “me-est” me is fluid, ever-evolving with each step I take—whether it's away from or back to the places I’ve known. In the end, we all are just travelers, finding ourselves not just in the leaving but also in the coming back, each time a little wiser, a little fuller, a little more ourselves.
PART II - THE RISK - Marie Kondo-ing My Soul
Finding myself turned out to be a grand process of elimination, like sifting through a lifetime's wardrobe, realizing not everything deserves space in my closet—or my life. Surprisingly, self-discovery wasn't about adding more; it was about peeling away the layers to see what, or who, was underneath.
Distractions became my plus-one to the party of self-avoidance. Whether it was diving into a series where everyone's life seems more tangled than my earphones or cleaning my apartment at odd hours to avoid the actual mess—my existential crisis—it was a comfortable discomfort, wrapping myself in the familiar blanket of busyness, mistaking motion for progress.
But comfort zones are seductive traps, whispering sweet nothings that echo our deepest fears about change. They promise safety but deliver stagnation, like reruns of a show you've outgrown. The laugh tracks no longer match your humor, and the plot lines feel too scripted, too constrained. The realization hit me: I was choosing the discomfort of the known over the discomfort of change, mistaking the devil I knew for a friend.
Over the years, I’ve learned that change doesn't always call for grand gestures; sometimes, it's the subtle shifts that illuminate the path forward. But at this moment in my life, it demanded something more tangible—a change in scenery. Not because I believed a new location would magically solve my problems but because I needed a blank slate, a place where the only role to fill was my own.
Embracing change meant acknowledging that the discomfort of staying put outweighed the fear of stepping into the unknown. It was about admitting that while new surroundings wouldn't fix everything, they offered a chance to start fresh, to build a life not on expectations, but on truth.
So, here I am, on the cusp of something new, armed with the knowledge that the process of finding myself is ongoing, a never-ending story of learning, unlearning, and relearning who I am. This journey of mine—marked by elimination, distractions, and ultimately, a leap into change—isn't unique, but it's mine. It's a story of realizing that true comfort comes not from avoiding discomfort but from embracing it as a sign of growth, of life pushing its boundaries. And maybe, just maybe, in seeking to find myself, I'll discover that the person I was meant to be has been there all along.
——
PART III - THE REWRITE - Making Sense of the Mess
In the script of life, my twenties were supposed to be the blockbuster season—a whirlwind of plot twists, character development, and scene-stealing moments. Instead, it felt more like I was stuck in the writers' room, endlessly brainstorming the next big arc. As the credits rolled on that decade, I found myself grieving not for what happened, but for what didn't. The adventures untaken, the mistakes unmade, the lessons learned too late. It's a peculiar kind of mourning, for a script that was never written, for a version of myself that never got to be.
My personal coming of age story arrived in my mid-thirties... a little, or a lot later than I was expecting, yet here I am, suitcase in one hand, and a hefty bag of 'what-ifs' in the other. Society's blueprint suggests this act of my life should be about settling down, finding a rhythm. But what if my rhythm feels off-beat, set to a soundtrack in a genre I've yet to explore? The allure of the familiar, the gravitational pull of family, friends, and that well-worn routine—it's like being caught in a comfortable riptide, pulling me away from the shores of 'what could be.'
The decision to leave, to pack up a life’s worth of deferred dreams and start fresh, especially at my age, feels like stepping off a cliff. There's exhilaration in the free fall, sure, but also a gnawing fear of the unknown. Will I fly, or will I crash? The chorus of voices, well-meaning but often echoing societal expectations, doesn't make the leap any easier. "Stay," they whisper, a mantra for the risk-averse. But staying feels like standing still, and standing still feels like fading away.
My heart, split down the middle, feels like a battlefield of contradiction—To stay is to be close to the people that feel like both an anchor and a chain. But to go? To go is to embrace the possibility of becoming who I might have been in those lost years. On one hand, the roots that ground me; on the other, the wings I've yet to fully extend. It’s not just a move, it’s a gamble, staking everything on the hope that somewhere out there, there is a place where the person I am and the person I was meant to be can finally align… undefined by the 'shoulds' and the 'coulds.'
Standing here, in my mid-thirties and on the verge of rewriting my story, I realize that perhaps this is what it means to truly live. Not in the shadow of expectations, not in the glow of what might have been, but in the stark, beautiful reality of what is. Maybe, the life we grieve for—the one we didn't live at the time we thought we were supposed to—is just the prologue to the story we're only now brave enough to write.
**The Friday Club is on the house for the first six weeks! After that, we'll switch to a paid subscription for those who want to stick around and keep this digital camaraderie alive.**
— The Friday Club — A digital hangout where movie nights, shower epiphanies, and life's charming chaos collide. From writer and creator Ash [of @the.ashfiles], expect weekly musings, honest stories, and a reminder that we’re all just winging this thing called “adulthood”. 🎬✍🏻📚
Really loved this and so deeply relate to it.