When we’re young, no one really explains how small some windows are. We assume opportunity will circle back around. We assume that if something is meant for us, it will wait patiently. But most of the time it doesn’t. It flickers, it shows up quietly, and if we hesitate too long, it moves on.
If you want to travel, you have to pursue it. If you want experiences, you have to look for them. There are jobs and seasons and programs designed for people willing to move before they feel ready. Cruise lines. Flight programs. Wilderness guiding. Temporary relocation. They rarely show up on your doorstep. You have to go toward them.
I didn’t.
There were doors in front of me that could have taken my life somewhere very different. One of them was modeling. I wanted it deeply. Not just the clothes or the city, but the validation. I wanted to be chosen in a way that felt undeniable. I wanted to make something out of my life that was grand! I was even selected to go to New York to train, to possibly be picked up by one of the top magazines. That type of opportunity does not knock twice.
But I chose love instead. Or at least the hope of it. Being wanted felt safer than risking rejection. Being needed felt more secure than stepping into something uncertain. At the time, that choice felt mature. Responsible. It felt like I was choosing stability. Boy, was I wrong.
Looking back, I can see that what I may have been chasing was not a runway at all. It was proof that I was enough. I wanted someone to confirm what I didn’t yet believe inside myself.
That pattern did not start there, and it did not end there.
I have spent much of my life orienting myself around being enough for someone else. I worked hard, but often for approval. I softened parts of myself to avoid abandonment. My anxious attachment is not an idea I read about in a book. It lives in my body.
When uncertainty enters my world, I feel it quickly. If communication shifts, if distance creeps in, if something feels unstable, my chest tightens, and my thoughts accelerate. I replay conversations. I overanalyze tone. I search for reassurance. I try to regain control in ways that can feel intense to the people around me. Sometimes I have hurt people because of that. Not always intentionally, but reactivity does not become harmless just because it is rooted in fear.
It is not just the big things I notice. It is the small changes. The way someone walks into a room differently than they did yesterday. The way their routine shifts slightly. The way they hold their phone with their back turned instead of facing me. The subtle difference in how they carry themselves. The energy in the air when something is unspoken. My body registers it before my mind does.
And that anxious attachment in me says, quietly or loudly, hey, something changed.
When I am regulated, I have done damn well at quieting that voice. I can breathe. I can tell myself this is old wiring speaking. This is abandonment fear. This is not necessarily reality. I can give it a reasonable explanation and let it pass. Thank you to 8.5 years of therapy for that one.
But when I am dysregulated, when hormones are off, when I am depleted or stressed or buried in winter darkness, the line between what I calmly tell myself is reality blurs. Fear starts to project itself. The clean edges turn gray. I start questioning whether I was ever being reasonable at all. I wonder if I have forced myself to ignore things. I circle. I analyze. I look for proof that confirms the fear.
Those are the unhealed areas, and unhealed areas do not always tell us the truth. We feed them unintentionally.
And it is a hard battle to go through. I see versions of it in other people, too, when certainty disappears and perfection cracks. We all have places where our nervous systems grip tighter than they need to. Knowing that does not make the wave smaller when it hits.
Add inattentive ADHD to that, and the internal noise gets louder. My thoughts branch and loop. I can hyperfocus for hours on something that lights me up and then struggle to start a basic task. I get dopamine from accomplishment, from novelty, from pushing myself. And when that stimulation fades, I crash. Winter strips away so many of my regulators at once. The light fades earlier. The trails freeze. The garden sleeps. The stillness amplifies the noise instead of soothing it.
Hormones have layered onto that in seasons that felt almost unfair. There have been times when my emotional reactions felt amplified beyond proportion. Everything is closer to the surface. Everything sharper. I feel myself reacting in ways that do not align with who I believed I was. Yet, I was still responsible for the impact.
Sometimes I feel like that lost girl again. The one standing at the edge of the playground, sleeves pulled over her hands, watching instead of belonging. Except now she is in adult rooms. In relationships. In conversations that matter. Carrying layers that feel too complicated to explain.
And yet, travel wakes something different in me.
It starts long before I leave. I sit down and start planning. I open maps and trace routes. I research waterfalls and trails. My brain sharpens. I hyperfixate in a way that feels productive instead of chaotic. Hours disappear. Each detail I lock into place gives me a small surge of pride. I built this. I organized this. I made this real. When everything goes smoothly, and the work I put in shows up in the experience, I feel capable. This skill quiets doubt.
Then there is the being there.
Hiking toward a waterfall where you hear the water before you see it. The low rumble moves through the air and into your chest. The crunch of gravel shifting into damp earth beneath your shoes. The smell of moss and wet leaves rises with each step. Your calves are tightening as the trail inclines. Your lungs are warming with effort. There is always that moment when your mind says, “This is enough; you can stop,” and you don’t. You keep going. Your heart pounds steadily. The trees thin. The sky opens wide and blue above you. The waterfall crashes down without hesitation, mist touching your skin, cool and alive. You feel small in a grounding way. Capable.
I love the stillness too. I lay back in a chair with the sun warming my skin. It kisses my shoulders and legs. I feel my body soften instead of bracing. Sunlight feels medicinal to me. Having a pool close by feels like balance. Water shimmers within reach. I know I can slip into it when the heat builds. Warmth and relief. Effort and rest. Movement and pause.
In those moments, I am not spiraling. I am not scanning for subtle shifts. I am not questioning whether I matter. I am just here. Ground beneath me. Sky above me. Breath steady.
And yet even with all of that, I still want to be chosen.
I still want to matter in a way that feels secure. When I feel left out, it lands. It touches the old place that remembers watching instead of belonging. It stirs that fear of being replaceable.
I am not trying to erase that wish. Connection matters to me deeply. I do not want to become someone who does not care. For me, the work is not eliminating the need to be chosen. It is learning how to want that without abandoning myself. It is learning how to feel the wave of anxious attachment rise and stay anchored. It is choosing myself even while hoping someone else chooses me too.
The roads I did not walk may have shaped me differently. Maybe living alone in a new city would have built independence sooner. Maybe chasing ambition first would have shifted my attachment patterns. I will never know.
What I do know is that the roots I grew are real. They are layered with ambition and fear, pride and insecurity, dopamine and depletion, sunlight and winter. They include mistakes. They include growth. They are tangled and imperfect and still alive.
I used to think the life I didn’t choose held the answer to who I could have been. Now I understand that every version of me has been built from the same soil. The girl who wanted the runway. The woman who wants to be chosen. The one who spirals. The one who climbs mountains. They are not separate people.
They are all me.
And I am learning to hold her with more grace than I ever have before.
Perfectly Imperfect 
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