Five Years Ago Today

Five years ago today I was on my way home for an adventure. I was halfway-ish between Wyoming and South Carolina, at a friends home in Kentucky. I had two days until my first wild flight, and the beginning of my first "real" adventure.

Two days later, on the 19th of December, 2005, I took off from Charleston. I spent the night riding the elevated trains in Chicago with the bums, before grabbing a spot at the booking computer in the lobby of the airport Hilton to book myself a spot to sleep the next night.

Five years ago I was wimpy, and scared, and more alive than I'd ever been before. I had almost total strangers telling me what a "ballsy" chick I was, how brave I must be, How they had AIDS in Africa, and I should be careful.

Five years ago I was planning to climb Kilimanjaro. I was going to see Cairo. I was spending a month in Africa, then three weeks at home, then moving *around the world* to chase my dream.

I didn't climb to the top of Kilimanjaro, but it didn't matter. I got extra sleep. I saw Lions and cheetah, and a leopard. Baboons went at it with wild abandon by the side of the road at the entrance to the Ngorongoro Crater. An elephant walked through our camp. We drank beer and roasted bananas, and laughed. I caught Malaria.

I like who I was five years ago. I was proud of that girl. She may have scammed her way into school, but *that* girl, she was going to do well, and ace everything, and live her dreams.

I'm not quite sure where she went. I haven't seen her in probably four and a half years. Back there somewhere, in the last 4 years or so, I let my dreams die. I let them get crushed under reality, and student loans, and debt. Maybe I never was that girl.

I was proud of that girl. I was proud to be her. And if maybe she was a little standoffish, and maybe she hadn't done the *whole* travel the world backpacking thing, I still think she could have been a backpacker.

I think, really, since I came back, I've just been existing. I don't really know what I want. I killed the dream I'd chased for years, probably half or more of my life. RAID kills bugs, I kill dreams.

I don't know really what I want to do with the rest of my life. I just know who I want to be. I want to be that girl who chases her dreams, striking high-fashion poses covered in grime. I want to be proud of me again.