Sometimes the bravest thing you do is leave everything familiar behind. I moved to Hawaii with two suitcases and a box of poems, and I'll be honest — I cried in the airport parking lot before I even got to the gate. Not because I was scared (though I was), but because leaving somewhere you've known your whole life feels like losing a version of yourself you're not totally ready to let go of.
Oregon had been home for as long as I could remember. The rain, the trees, the way the coast smells like salt and pine all at once. There's a kind of beauty in grey skies that people who grew up under them understand — it's quieter, more introspective. It matches a certain kind of mood I carry around like a coat I can't take off.
But something in me needed warmth. Not just sunshine — actual warmth. In people, in place, in the way the ocean looks when it's teal instead of slate. I needed to find out if I could build something new in a place that didn't already know my story.
The first week was disorienting in the best way. Everything smelled different. The birds were wrong — in the most wonderful sense. I ate a mango off a tree in someone's yard and thought: okay. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is what I was trying to get to.
I'm still figuring it out. But I write more here. I paint more here. And I think that's the truest measure of whether a place is right for you.