I get it. This probably isn’t the captivating inaugural blog post you hoped for when you decided to wander over here. Sorry, there won’t be any compelling stories of touching down in India and spending a week exploring Buddhism. Similarly, there won’t be a tale of training with an endurance athlete to understand the mental strain of that lifestyle. A time will come for that (and more), yes, but for now, you’ll have to make do with a relatively mundane story—one that chronicles arguably the biggest, and potentially most impactful, journey of my life: moving out for the first time.
So, why does this topic deserve to be my first post? Because of the journey it took me to get there—a journey that took me almost 10,000 days. Yes, you read that right: I didn’t move out of my parent’s house until I was 27 years old, almost a decade after I graduated from high school, and at least five years after the majority of my friends have already done so. Heck, some of them even have kids. Instead, I’ve been at home—the same home I grew up in.
Why? Because I just wasn’t ready to leave. And when I say I “wasn’t ready to leave,” I mean my brain was on the fritz, and I was far too mentally unstable even to fathom the idea of supporting myself on my own. And to be honest, up until recently, I was embarrassed by this. Even ashamed. With all of my friends out on their own, here I was having dinner with my parents every night. (Keep in mind that until recently, only a few people knew about my struggles with mental illness. So, from the outside looking in, it probably looked like I was living at home, well, to just live at home.) Yes, I realize this is nothing to be ashamed about, but I just couldn’t shake the stigma.
But now, as I approach my 28th birthday, I’m proud to say I moved out. More importantly, I’m proud to say that my mental health is no longer preventing me from doing something that I dreamt about for so long. While it may be a blip on life’s’ radar to some, the move (literally and figuratively) is monumental to me. That’s why I’m starting Strategic Wander right here.
I’m not going to get into the “why” and “how” I knew I was ready to move out or the strategies and support structures I put in place to make sure I was making the right decision—that post is coming. For now, I’ll leave it brief. To me, this post is more about the message than the content; it’s about letting someone know who’s at constant war with their brain, that you can find a sense of normalcy.