BY KCY

We talk a lot about being the best versions of ourselves. Heck, our whole website is dedicated to that!

But, just what does it mean to be the best version of yourself?

I was nineteen when I went to Sydney, Australia to study abroad my first semester of my junior year in college. I’d only been out of the country once and that was with family to Turkey, so embarking on this trip alone to the other side of the world was a big deal.

Little did I know, that this experience would change my life.

This is a little sad to admit, but, it’s the only time in my life other than the innocence of my childhood pre-divorce, that I can remember being happy. It’s the only time in my life I ever really truly became the person I always wanted to be.

If you know me, you know I’ve always lived a very regimented and serious life. I’ve always hung out with the right people, done well in school, initiated things without ever being told. I’ve always been the good girl. The “Yes” girl. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that sometimes when you are the “Yes” girl, you don’t always allow yourself to do the things you really want to do. You tend to do whatever everyone else wants you to do, what you think everyone expects you to do, and what everyone really does expect you to do. You don’t let yourself go. You aren’t free.

I’m okay with this most of the time. But it can get tiring. And it does prevent me from being the best version of me.

Because the best version of me is that Sydney-study-abroad-nineteen-year-old me, the happy me.

This Sydney me was not afraid to take chances. She was not afraid to make new friends. To talk to people she would have never imagined talking to before. She was not afraid to go out on a Wednesday night with friends. She was not afraid to travel in a foreign country alone. To fall in love with a city. To fall in love with a group of friends. To let them become close to her. To fall in love period.

This Sydney version still exercised religiously, watched her diet, went to all of her classes and studied hard (She made all A’s!). She called her mom every week. She was still responsible.

But…for the first time in her life, she didn’t worry about her family, she didn’t worry about what she would/should do in life. She didn’t worry about the future. She just lived.

Today, people would call this being mindful. Being present each day. Having gratitude for the moment. Some people spend thousands of dollars trying to achieve this nirvana. Many people never find this peace.

This Sydney me did. You could argue that studying abroad is a vacation from life and what’s why it was so easy to be mindful. Perhaps you are right. But, what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with having a time in your life where you are utterly happy?

I sobbed almost the entire flight home from Sydney. I sobbed for my first love. I sobbed for the city I’d fallen helplessly in love with. I sobbed for the me I knew I was leaving behind.

It’s been twenty years since I left Sydney. I’ve always said I would go back, but I never did. Life, as usual, got in the way. Or maybe, I got in my own way.

It’s time, though. It’s time to get back to that best version of me.

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