A friend recently gave me some advice. He said, “Emily, you know, you can choose how long you want to feel bad about a shitty situation. You can let it affect you all the time for a long time, or you can decide that you’re ready to just move on. You know, it’s a lot like a technique people use to grieve. You set aside something like 5 minutes a day to allow yourself to feel bad, cry, scream, do whatever you need to do. When the 5 minutes are up the rest of the day you don’t allow the bad situation to enter your thoughts and take over your day. You make it a priority to move on, and to be happy. I mean, who says you have to stay unhappy for awhile.”
And I thought, ‘you know what…that’s fucking great advice.’
They drive on the other side of the road in Europe…on the other side of the car. Oh, and not to mention skinny windy roads where technically the speed limit is 100km/h, but you’re struggling driving them at 40km/h. But that’s Ireland for ya. Visions of me accidently driving us off a cliff and seeing the ocean surface get closer and closer to our windshield before water explodes into our faces definitely played in the back of my mind a few times the night before I had to drive. But when I hopped into our tiny car off to our adventure I felt oddly in control. Which, I realize is a feeling your should have while behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. But I mean I oddly felt in control of my life at that moment–doing something I had never done before, had scary dramatic visions of, and yet I felt…intrigued. I was taking a direction.
This was the first big trip I planned, payed for, and attempted out of the country. I had no idea what to expect, and mostly no idea how I’d feel. I didn’t want to have too much expectations of having life altering realizations while in Ireland, but I guess I did hope for a lil something. So, as I’m embarking on a journey where it just seems too good to be true, no clue on what to expect, I find myself zooming through the Irish country roads adoring the breathtaking scenery–having the time of my life. There’s my lil something.
Once you allow yourself to be open to things, you learn a lot about yourself. So, let yourself try something new. Let yourself feel butterflies. Let yourself laugh with strangers, and let yourself fall into adventures. Because when you drive on the wrong side of the road, you’ll find that it’s a hell of a lot of fun and something you want to be familiar with.
In(Between) Dreams 