I’ve been reflecting on a lot of the choices I have made throughout my lifetime. The good ones and the bad ones. The ones I would have made differently if I had the knowledge I carry today.

I’m also learning to accept the fact that I am living with the consequences of choices I made with the information available to me at the time.

That distinction matters.

I know I am sitting in an apartment that I no longer carry a lease for. I know I won’t be recommitting to this location because I absolutely hate being here.

At this point, I see two possible paths forward.

They can let me do what I need to do, allow me to move forward with the place I found, and help me transition calmly. Or they can move forward with court proceedings, in which case I will find myself a civil rights attorney, hand over the documentation I have collected, and let the legal process determine what happens next.

Either way, I know I need a lease in order to move forward with my plans.

I know where I want to live. I know the pros and cons of the place I want to go. I even accept that I will probably be living in my next home for another two years because of my mental health and the neurological changes happening inside my brain.

But I also know that my life is bigger than an apartment.

The changes in me began when I was around 25 years old and decided I needed a better life—not just for my children, but for myself.

I had spent years fighting my own body to create a baby with a man who never loved or deserved me as I am. I devoted enormous amounts of time and effort to making him happy while never feeling like the same effort was being made for me.

For most of my life, I devoted myself to the people directly around me while rarely putting my own interests first.

My health faded slowly.

I became a shell of myself.

The adventure I had once signed up for was shoved into a closet because the person I wanted to share parenthood and life with was not someone who wanted to make time for me. Our interests never really matched.

Now here I am, almost two decades later, at 42 years old, thinking about how different my life really is.

I have a partner who loves spending time with me. We work hard to help each other through the lives we have now rather than spending all of our time focused on the lives we had before.

He still has things of his own to process.

I have things I need to let go of and heal from.

And I need to build the confidence to make changes in my world and genuinely believe that I am capable of creating a life I want to live.

Maybe it doesn’t need to be as complicated as I once thought.

I share my project.

I keep it small.

I make my art.

I share my story.

I ask other people to share theirs.

It’s really not much more complicated than that.

And sometimes I just want to take my backpack, pack a few days’ worth of things, and jump onto public transportation for an adventure.

If my adventure buddy wants to help me plan wherever we’re going, I would adore it.

There are millions of things to explore, including things that cost absolutely nothing. There are buses and trains and sidewalks leading to buildings I have never seen, parks I have never walked through, people I have never met, and stories I haven’t heard yet.

If he wants the apartment to himself for a few days and I’m able to go, I can do that too.

If he wants to come along, take on the stress of driving, and turn it into an entirely different kind of adventure, that is for him to decide.

I think I would start small with him.

Maybe a weekend in New York City using buses and trains. We could stop along the way and look at cool buildings.

Maybe we don’t even go that far.

Maybe it’s just Hartford.

Maybe we take turns. I plan some adventures using public transportation, and he drives us on trips he wants to plan.

I want him to see what living in the moment without automatically depending on a car can feel like.

That doesn’t mean I’m asking him to give up his car or a lifetime of things he worked hard to earn. His car is important to him. Having the ability to do things on our own schedule is huge.

I just want to show him another kind of adventure—one without the stress of always having to drive.

I want to create something magical in our lives.

I want us to share my business cards, talk about my project, make art, meet people, explore places, and document pieces of it on my Instagram account.

Some days, I imagine grabbing the dog and cat, packing food for them, throwing some clothes, my charger, water bottle, snacks, and business cards into my backpack, and heading out.

The uncertainty would probably kill the man.

He would have no idea what I was doing or where I was planning to go because I have reached a place in my life where I have decided I’m willing to be a dustball in the wind of life.

For now, I would keep those travels small.

I need to walk more. I need to get healthier. I need to remember snacks. I need to take care of myself while I’m doing it.

I can refill my water bottle along the way. I can bring my dog on a leash attached to me. I can wander somewhere unfamiliar and discover what is there instead of needing to know exactly where I will end up before I begin.

Maybe someday the apartment gets a house sitter for a week or two while Dan and I go somewhere without the pets.

Maybe we just leave with a deadline.

We know when we have to be home, but everything between leaving and coming back is ours to discover.

How far can we get?

What can we see?

Who might we meet?

What will we remember?

That’s the life I want to live.

I want a home my children can enjoy. I want them to know there is a place they can come back to. I also want the freedom to leave that home sometimes and explore the world while enjoying every minute I have to live.

Money?

Yeah, it’s important.

Food?

Essential.

Love?

Non-negotiable.

My family knows about the cyst. They know it has changed. They know about my project, my business, my plans, my ambitions, and the person I believe I am at my core.

The man beside me is almost a mirror image of that transformation in reverse.

He changed on the outside first, and now people may not see how much he has changed on the inside.

I changed on the inside first.

Sometimes I wonder if people realize that I have always had pieces of this person inside me. I simply didn’t spend my life talking about everything I had survived or complaining about the past I left behind.

I endured trauma.

I was blamed for things that never should have been placed on a child.

I followed the path that was laid out in front of me because, for a long time, that was the path I knew how to follow.

Now I get to decide what direction I walk next.

I hope beyond anything within my control that some of the dreams I once shared with my babies still happen.

My firstborn thinks I’m a loon.

They think I have an imagination that cannot be controlled and stories that nobody wants to hear.

Maybe part of that is true.

My imagination has never been particularly interested in staying inside its assigned box.

But imagination is not the same thing as a plan.

I can dream enormously while still handling the things directly in front of me.

Share the good.

Acknowledge the stress.

Make a plan.

Follow it legally.

Keep moving.

I’m not sure where my life will go.

I have no idea whether “Robiwan” will someday land on May 4th every year. I don’t know whether it will become something much bigger than Transcend Fest or remain something small and meaningful.

I just love the idea behind it—the force we all carry inside ourselves.

Maybe when the time is right, there will be multiple branches of the event.

Maybe the full collection of events eventually takes an entire week.

Maybe it becomes something only slightly different from things that are already happening.

I would love to see events happening in major cities across the country during the same week.

Then I could look at each location and say:

This many people came.

This much money was raised or earned.

This many people participated.

This is what we accomplished.

This is what changed.

That is the kind of growth I care about.

I want to make my brother proud.

I want dancing.

I want music.

I want art.

I want stories.

I want a ton of people who genuinely love living life—or who are trying to remember how.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I want to still be able to grab my backpack, fill my water bottle, step onto a bus, and wonder where I’m going next.

I spent enough of my life believing I had to know exactly where the road ended before I was allowed to start walking.

I don’t anymore.

Sometimes I just want to see where it goes.