Journals from the Jungle X: One-Way Ticket

Does aloneness invite potential, or regret?

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Welcome to Journals from the Jungle—a series of stories from my recent travels, drawn straight from the pages of my journals. These are reflections on breaking free from a life of structure, convention, and societal expectations, and finding my way back to an embodied, authentic self. Through journeys in nature—and into the nature of self—through adventure, challenge, rest, and the dramatic dismantling of old beliefs, I explore themes of freedom, pleasure, love, and the strength that comes from shedding what no longer serves us. I hope these stories inspire you to embrace change, reclaim your vitality, and live more freely.

March 9th 2024 continued

Airport: These environments are such a reentry shock. I feel hollowed out. Regarding reentry, I now have to turn myself from the jungle and surf, to the screen. Turn myself from feeling to doing.

I scroll through my photos from the trip and choose favorites.

5:15pm: About to depart. I would otherwise be just arriving to the beach for sunset. I feel … wrecked. In the sense that I hate the feeling of cramming my brain back into a calendar and computer. I know I’ll reacclimate, and I hate that too. I think I really need to take off, for even longer. I need to just go. I see all the signs of my loving it—living for it—the physicality, the nature, the nakedness, the minimalism. I can enjoy culture, but I don’t choose it over being an outlier jungle defector, etc.

It would be possible to see my whole life in NYC as part of my “competency problem.” Now, how to pivot (hate that word), parlay, redirect the momentum, if that even matters. Meaning: What do I have to do to see this book all the way through, and to sell in the next? That is what matters.

We take off at sunset, which I watch through the plane window. As the wheels leave land, I feel pierced. We lift into the pink clouds and I think, “It feels like I have to kill something in order to return.”

My heart feels like it’s breaking. A chest-caving ache. I already miss Costa Rica.

This is change. Prying apart, unhinging, exposing, and reforming … change.

~

May 15th, 2024

Here I am on the eve of the eve of GOING BACK. Already, somehow. What is time?

I did it. I did a lot. I wrote the book. I bought the house in Costa Rica. I survived a stretch of time that felt possibly impossible to survive, actually.

Now how do I feel? I wish I could say elated, as eager as the moment I left to return. Some part of me is, and some parts of me feel nervous. About? I don’t know exactly. I feel a vague mix of anticipation and excitement and nervousness about the unknown. It feels possible though. I feel … like I’m about to step into the future. Into the next version of myself. Who will I be? How will I be? Probably, if we’re honest, it’ll be very, very good. Will it all feel less romantic? Less good than it has? But these are things we can’t know now. Soon-soon enough, we will, all.

From the precipice: This is good. I am so proud of you. XOR

~

The day before the last morning in/of this ritual I have of stealing time first thing in the morning to write. Dad’s death was the catalyst that gave me permission to do what I’ve always known I should do (write). You were a catalyst that led to openness. The book deal was a catalyst that led to stealing so much time that actually, I began stealing my life back. From what they call audience capture. Which could apply, and does so often, so much more widely. To how we live and who we shape ourselves to be, and to please, and to prove something to. That is to say, there is audience capture, and there is society.

All of that has led to this last morning before tomorrow. The leap into what’s next which is now just a single step … off this edge.

And I’m marveling at how, despite so much of my anxiety having been about the unknown (anticipation, lack of control) I also continue to live for it. Once again thrusting myself forward and in and onward. How else could it be “a great adventure or nothing at all”? How else to grow. How else to live.

~

I can’t tell if I’m leaving home or going home. Both and, I suppose.

5/17

On board (with a one-way ticket and no idea when I’ll return, for the first time ever): I feel alternately peaceful and giddy. I know this journey well now. It is mine now? There are so many things to feel right now, I am just cycling through them. The book! The house! The professional repositioning. Who I will become! My life, and how I’ve managed to make it into something that allows me to take off for an indefinite amount of time—to paradise, no less. I hardly know what I’m celebrating. Love, love, love.

~

I am here. Sitting outside by the little pool, naked. I made it in time to see sunset, on that wild, wild beach. “God’s country” as Dad would say. It’s all too beautiful.

I cried when I saw the horizon again, for the first time since the last time I was here. I have done this. And, it’s the same. The blue-gold sea, the persistent breeze … all just as I left it, not knowing how it or I would be when I returned.

And this home. I own it. Outright. I definitely can’t believe that yet.

A gecko laughs, slithers by.

Unreal, unreality, this.

And how good I already feel.

There are things I am going to learn about life by the sea … so much, so much.

I have no idea what I’m “doing” here and it’s fascinating. One day at a time. I said I would leave when I either had to, or when it felt like time. I trust the unfolding here, the undoing, the rewiring.

5/18

The beach, with coffee. No one else is out here with me. A dog tumbles around my toes. I laugh out loud at it, and marvel. Wild country, I say again. And these people, they’re cowboys. Dad is everywhere.

I didn’t even mean to come out here to the sea exactly, but it drew me. And now that I’m here, I feel satisfied. Needing nothing more than to be here with it. To watch, listen, feel … it’s something cellular, maybe genetic. But why was Dad also so drawn to the ocean? Relentless, monstrous, mysterious, sublime.

Afternoon: I’m reflecting on “what happens” out here. I don’t even know all of what does, but I have absolute faith in its value. I feel good—peaceful and lazy, comfortable, though at times it does feel strange to be so alone. And to not know how long I’ll be here—like when I’m buying groceries, but how much? I don’t know what the sign will be to go. Or maybe I’ll stay?! For like a month?

5/19

Post-surfing and I feel … electric. Electric with no outlet. Effervescence in my veins. Dazed into total stillness. I feel heartbroken in paradise, already. I almost don’t mind because these feelings, they’re unrivaled, but also this is real life.

One thing I do know: Time kills feelings. And so, while it is now, I will feel them all even if doing so kills me. In fact, that is part of this whole process.

Sunset: Do I like being alone because I like being alone or because it invites potential? Which is to say, in the grander scheme of things, should I be this way, or would I regret (does it always come down to that?) not having … what? Made more memories juntos rather than sola? Or will I manage to have it all?

No dates

I feel like I can feel my life cracking open. My heart, is this the weeping? Yes, here it is. My love of this place, the severity of the contrast with my life in New York, the desire to stay—already so strong now.

(Sobbing.)

I don’t even know why, why

It’s want

It’s relief

It’s release of all it took to get here, like everything I’ve ever done, and now it’s never wanting to leave

I receive an email from K, the last line of which is “Please take good care of that beautiful heart of yours that beats with the cells of your father’s.”

I feel myself stretched—physically, mentally, energetically—to limits I’ve known only here. The sunset is godly. This is heaven. I have died, actually, and it is, actually, killing off parts of me. This feels so true that I wonder now, actually, if I am mentally stable.

There is some kind of energy here. I never related to people talking about vortexes or portals but that’s what this is. It exists elsewhere, in some dimension beyond the “normal.” (I keep pausing because I really do feel at some mental limit.) And, see, this is how it is: overwhelming, annihilating, pressing in and pulling out until I simply give in.

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