Honest Letters From the Road

The personal journals of a single, 34 year old, neurodivergent nomad.

A quick note before we begin—
This piece is part of my Honest Letters from the Road series, a collection of raw, reflective, journal-style essays I usually save for paid subscribers. But this one felt too human not to share.

If it lands with you, if you see yourself in the ache or the becoming or the quiet hope stitched between these lines—know there’s more where this came from. The door’s always open.

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You’re on purpose. Like wildly so. That’s on my heart so before I dive in, I just had to get that off my chest.

I can feel myself sitting on the precipice lately—but honestly I feel like I’ve been saying that for the last three years. And now, staring at the calendar, realizing that half the year has already come and gone, I feel a bit angry.

Angry that I spent a handful of months giving energy to a person and a story, I promised I’d have better boundaries around this time. Angry that I had the hardest month of my life in January, and that it’s not like I didn’t learn anything, but the impact feels duller than the burns I left with walking through the fire like I did.

I’m not angry at myself, not really, I know it’s part of the story, my story. I keep saying I’m not mad at him. And there is a part of me that isn’t because I do understand how he did what he did in the end, and also, there is a very loud part of me that feels anger like coals and ashes smoldering under my skin waiting for gasoline to go up in flames. And I want to smack him and say how dare you. But I think more so than anything, I feel angry because I said it would be different this year, that I would get out and see more, do more, feel more, live more alive. That this time it wouldn’t pass me by while still convincing myself I was ready. That I would have a different financial plan, a whole new set of options I felt invigorated by then I blinked and time has passed and I’m here again.

And then I have to remind myself that I’m not here “again.” I’m writing this from a chair I’ve never sat in, in a brewery I’ve never been to, in a town I hadn’t thought would have any significance to me, in the wake of lessons I’ve learned differently, in freedom I’ve never worn in the way I feel it wrapped around me now. I couldn’t possibly be here “again” because truly, there is no again when there’s never been a before here.

I wrote this quote on my wipe-off board the other day: “What’s meant for you will not miss you. No exceptions.”

And it was curious to me that “no exceptions” isn’t actually part of the quote. So where did it come from that I felt the need to write that for myself? I mean, logically speaking, it seems to mean that maybe there is some part of me that is worried I might be. And then as I do, I thought, “I wonder how many other people hear this quote and so desperately want to believe it, but have this small, tiny voice that— they too might not even notice— also needs a reminder that there are no exceptions to this absolute truth.” 8 billion people out there, I can’t be the only one, that’s just math.

So this is what I say to you if you’re one of those 8 billion I’m not alone with, for us:

You can know you’re meant to be where your feet are planted and still feel a nagging like time and life forgot you somewhere along the way and kept going to another place and time you were meant to see.

The fear of missing out on memories you’ve never had in places you’ve never been to, and dreams hanging in closets that are haunted with people that couldn’t stay.
Lives you imagined trying on in a time that doesn’t exist.

I know how a soul can feel fractured, like so much of what you’re in sometimes feels like it doesn’t fit.
When people say, “I thought I would have it figured out by now,” what I’m now convinced they really mean is they feel like their life would fit their soul by now. Like some congruent truth would have found its way to the surface. Like something would settle inside of them because even if it was a mess, the mess would be honest, and the struggle would be for something.

But wrestling with, in, and for a life that feels like shoes that don’t fit or a jacket that doesn’t actually keep you warm is…maddening. The goldilocks of experiences, not too hot or too cold but too hollow and too heavy all at once. Shoes that are too big for the quiet life of modesty you yearn for or too small for how much more your spirit has room to soak in and dance through.

Please hear me when I say this: All of this is not evidence of failure, it is the middle of the expedition of paying attention, and you are not too late to that party if you dared to show up at all because most just don’t. Or they pull back the curtain and witness the weight of not being able to unknow the effort that goes into holding all that is real, and true, and what matters. It holds you close to what’s honest, like a flame you can’t escape the edge of being burned by. Not just about life but about yourself and your place in it.

This is what it feels like to be in the middle of becoming. When it’s not polished or cinematic, or full of easy-to-decipher meaning. When the pieces of making it make sense just don’t fit cleanly, and yet your arms are heavy with the weight of relentlessly trying through almosts and so close-ses.
When you asked for none of it but are doing it anyway.

It’s not graceful, in fact, sometimes it’s downright ugly and yet you’re getting less interested with how it looks and more interested in what bits of it you can cling to, and pay attention for, so you don’t go numb.

So now what?
Well, not in spite of this but because of this. Still. Even here—especially here.
What’s meant for you, is already yours.
Already circling you, yes, even right this moment, in every breath that fills your lungs, like a storm that’s more baptism than punishment. Drenching you in the water, waist deep, you’re trying to claw your way out desperately, like you’re drowning when you simply forgot you were built and born to swim.

Already whispering to you in the morning light, the way the first sip of coffee tastes, when the sun licks your face finding its way through the mess you’re trying to clean up before you’re ready.
You are not the exception.
You are the evidence.
That things can hurt and heal simultaneously, that none of it is straying from the path or falling off or forgetton somewhere but it’s part of it all and it still matters. That every single day when you feel like the martyr walking through the fire and sharing to show others that they also can, isn’t simply for them but it’s forging something within you, devastating and divine all at once.

It can be hard to swallow and exhausting to hold and true. I promise.

So let it fall away.
The timeline. The shame. The story that says you should be somewhere else or how your mind plays moments like movie montages when you wonder if you just did that one thing differently something surely would have fallen into place and nothing would be the same in a way that’s somehow better than here.

Let that rot in the dirt where it belongs.
Let it become the soil where something wilder and truer grows.
Where bolder, braver dreams blossom and hope holds your hand firmly as you continue to be forged through fire.
Let the sweat of becoming be the water that nourishes your next chapters.
In vivid colors and deep belly laughs.
In a life that actually fits, feels alive in your blood, and wraps around your bones.
Because what is meant for you will not miss you.
Not now.
Not ever.

You are on purpose.
You are not the exception.
And you are never alone, even if you show up to meet what’s yours limping.

It will find you.
No exceptions.

to the brave thing,