Everything you needed. Anything I want.

I've come so close to realizing a dream, I'm afraid I might wake up just as I board the plane.

Everything I've done for the last 6 months has been some form of intentional step towards this.

Everything I've learned in 26 years will have to serve me in what I'm about to do.

From walking to speaking to eating to… you name it. It's all lead up to this.

I'm choosing to believe that my past was everything I needed to get to this point. And that the future can be anything I want.

It's a lesson I taught myself a long time ago. One of my first solo trips. A spontaneous bike ride to Barrie. Where I stayed for the weekend, met people, made friends, partied, went to a cottage, and kept on heading north.

I tattooed my wrists with ambiguous text. Initials: EXN and AXW. To me it meant: the past was Everything I Needed to get to that point. The future could be Anything I Want.

I know you're probably wondering… why X? Well, I'll tell you why.

I wasn't sure of how I should phrase it. Was the past everything I needed? Or everything you needed. Was I talking about myself, or to myself? I debated back and forth, forth and back. The difference seems small enough, but it did change it slightly, and I wasn't willing to let one go. So I compromised, and did both. I put a Y and and I together. I wrote it in as many variations as I could, until I realized I could put the figures together to make an X. It was perfect.

There's a lot more to this tattoo story, but I'm saving that for the book I'm writing. You'll just have to wait for it.

I will say though, that I decided I'd tattoo the tops of my wrists, because well, I was "a badass"… ahah, you know? At the time, everyone was getting the inside of their wrists tattooed, and I thought it was a cop out.

I decided that summer that I never wanted to work in an office again. So I got these tattoos as a challenge to expand my horizons and find my career potential outside of office life. And honestly I've never looked back… on office life that is. I'm so grateful to have found myself outside of that environment.

I will say, sometimes I see my wrists and wish I hadn't done it. I regret them to an extent. They make me feel trashy at times, even ugly. So I have to stand in front of the mirror and see myself as a whole just so I can put their size and presence into perspective. When I do that, I see they aren't really that bad, and they kind of just blend in with the rest of me.

I'm marked. I've always been and I'm always going to be. And I do it so that one day, if and when I'm a wrinkly old lady I'll have things to remember my life by, conversation pieces I carry on my sleeve. Pieces of myself I could have otherwise lost.

The last tattoo I got was of an anatomical heart with a tree growing out the top. The roots and the veins mixing to be one. I got it for my family. So I could take them with me everywhere I go; symbolically.

I have no choice. If the technology existed to shrink them down to pocket size I would in a heart beat.

But until then, this tattoo will suffice. The intention is there. The message, carved into my skin. My family, my heart, my kin - forever at my side, even if across the planet.

That's it for tonight

All my flighty love