"To Live Will Be an Awfully Great Adventure"
The last time I cried at the airport I was 11 years old.
My family and I were moving halfway across the world—a move that filled me with rage for my parents & a fear of loneliness I’d never felt before.
“How could you take me away from my friends? How could you so easily drive a blade through my future? How could you shatter everything known and expect me to know how to put the pieces together?”
That summer I met my first of many sleepless nights. The insomnia came like an existential whip—I couldn’t have understood at 11 that my fear of being the only one awake at night was also the fear of being the only one anywhere—of being alone, of being left, of finding out that everyone was ok without me.
When I got divorced in 2020, that fear came true—someone was ok without me. I was alone. I was left. The loneliness shattered me, and instead of sleepless nights I threw myself into an unconscious state so I wouldn’t have to feel it at all.
This, of course, didn’t work.
As time went by, I found ways to be alone. I found ways to reckon with the heartbreak. I found that, despite what I believed, I was ok, that I could survive, and that life would go on.
What I couldn’t have imagined, though, was what came next.
When I finally found comfort and even joy on my own, I realized my loneliness & fears of being alone weren’t about someone else—they were about me: I was afraid I wasn’t enough all on my own, and that without someone to reflect my goodness or enoughness, I wouldn’t know that I was.
But I am.
That wavers constantly—remembering this takes effort and I slip. A lot. I feel scared and unlovable and close my heart to everyone around me—it’s easier to stay closed and unafraid than it is to risk the security I’ve built in my heart.
So now when loneliness or fear creeps in, I remind myself the answer is not work harder to be independent. The remedy for a fearful heart is not to close it. To meet myself back in that middle space of connection to others requires passing through the fear or sitting in it. Sure, there’s stability and stillness if I stay on my side of the river. But I’ll never feel the rush of love’s ride if I don’t get in the water.
Yesterday, when the fear of getting in fooled me, I found myself snapping at my friends and turning inside myself. It was my last day in Sayulita, and I was grumpy, irritable, and on edge.
Six months ago, I attended a retreat here to mend a battered nervous system and hopeless heart. After the retreat, I simply never left. My heart needed something here, and I found it: friendship.
I’ve been challenged by my friends here. They’ve triggered me, angered me, and confused me. Old wounded parts of me came out, fearing exclusion, fearing judgment, then judging and projecting myself. We worked through these conflicts together—sometimes uncomfortably, but we looked at the discomfort together. As if to say “I know your anger or confusion isn’t mine, but I would love to witness it with you because I want to know you. And I’m grateful you want me to.”
So when I started snapping at my friends late yesterday afternoon, I thought, “Rachel, are you doing this because it would be easier to leave if there was less love? Are you afraid to feel what it is to say goodbye? Because I don’t think you’re really mad at them. I think you’re terrified of leaving, of being left, of being alone. Baby girl, you gotta feel the fear so you can get to the other side where all the love is.”
I blew several snot bubbles and cried into my friend Kelsey’s shoulder. She held me, the same way I held her hours later when she sunk to the kitchen floor and cried, “all my friends are leaving.”
“Do you wanna go cliff jump into the ocean?” she asked.
“Yes,” I beamed, “I need to go shout my fears into the wind.
By the time we had arrived at Los Muertos, I had shut down completely. I climbed the small cliff alone until I found a safe place from which to scream.
Feeling utterly foolish, ridiculous, and cliche, I started yelling.
“I’M AFRAID OF BEING HEARTBROKEN!”
“I’M TIRED OF HATING MY BODY!”
“I’M AFRAID OF BEING JUDGED!”
“I’M STILL AFRAID I’M HARD TO LOVE!”
“I DON’T WANT TO BE AFRAID ANYMORE!”
Drenched in a salty stew of my sweat, tears, and ocean water, I sobbed quietly into the thick ocean air. I scanned the cliff’s edge, looking for a safe place to jump.
“When was the last time I did this?” I thought. I remembered the years spent at summer camp in the San Juans, and heard my brother’s voice saying, “you’ll be fine, just make sure you jump out really far.”
I counted to three, and didn’t jump.
“Come on Rach. You don’t have to be afraid.”
I counted to three again. Nothing.
I paced around, wondering if my gut was trying to tell me this was simply a bad idea.
“Rachel, you can do this. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
One, two, three.
I jumped, screaming as I plunged into the water.
When I returned to the beach, my friends were there, waiting, smiling. Unphased by the fact that I needed to physically express my feelings, aware that I isolate sometimes, and still waiting, lovingly, for when I might be finally ready to open back up.
The hardest part of learning to be alone, I’ve learned, is not staying alone.
Because when I truly feel safe on my own, I will seek connection—having healthy, loving relationships becomes an extension of my self-worth.
To go in we must go out, and to go out we must go in.
Or, as my dear friend Sophia says, “As above, so below.”
Luckily, our flights aligned, and we were able to sit in the airport together for our final moments in Mexico.
“You’re going to Scotland,” she said, and I laughed hysterically.
“I’m going to Scotland?! What the fuck am I doing? Why did I think it would be a good idea to rent a tiny cottage on a secluded island in Scotland the middle of winter? What the fuck am I doing?”
She laughed with me, and we smiled in the uncertainty of it all.
“Now boarding flight 347.”
“That’s me,” I winced.
Sophia pulled me close, and for a moment I was 11 years old again. She looked at me, eyes glistening, and said, “Never forget, you are the sun.”
Clutching my ticket, I waited until just the last moment and did the thing they do in movies—I looked back at her as I walked across the tarmac, locking eyes one last time with my dear friend, in gratitude.
I inhaled and whispered, “to live will be an awfully great adventure.”
>>Learn more about Rachel’s journey with Eating Disorder recovery, depression, divorce, & finding comfort in the discomfort of living in her memoir, Where the River Flows.
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