Not every main character moment looks like golden hour on a rooftop somewhere beautiful, because sometimes it’s standing in Tesco for far longer than you need to, staring at the same shelf, picking things up and putting them back like somehow that’s going to fix the mood you’re in.
Your basket doesn’t really make sense, it’s random, it’s not a proper meal, and at some point you just give up, buy something small, and tell yourself it counts as self care, even though you know it’s not really about the food at all.
It’s not glamorous, and it’s definitely not aesthetic, but it’s real, and somehow those are the moments that actually stay with you.
For a long time, I thought living more meant doing what everyone else seemed to be doing, like getting coffee, having routines, and becoming someone who looked like they had everything together from the outside, even if that wasn’t how it actually felt.
The thing is, I don’t even like coffee, and yet I still felt like I should be drinking it, like it was part of becoming that version of myself, as if copying the habits would somehow make everything else fall into place.
It never really worked like that, and I think deep down I knew it wouldn’t.
I’ve always been someone who worries about being judged, even in small situations that probably don’t matter as much as they feel like they do, and that feeling has followed me into so many decisions, or more often, into not making them at all.
For a long time, I thought that hesitation was just part of who I was, something I had to work around, but I started to realise that it wasn’t protecting me from anything, it was just keeping me in the same place.
At some point, I decided to lean into the idea of doing things “for the plot”, not in a way that meant being reckless or ignoring everything, but in a way that pushed me slightly out of that constant overthinking, because I realised that waiting until I felt ready or confident was basically the same as not doing it at all.
For three years, I didn’t travel, and I had every reason lined up for why that made sense, telling myself it wasn’t the right time, that I didn’t have the money, that it would be better to wait until everything felt more stable.
So I waited, thinking eventually things would line up properly and it would feel easier to go, but nothing really changed, and the idea of it stayed exactly that, just an idea.
Then over the last six months, I did the complete opposite, and I went away almost every month, not in a perfectly planned or thought-through way, and definitely not in a way that made total sense on paper, but more in a “I’ll go and figure it out as I go” kind of way.
And for the most part, I did figure it out, but not always in the way I expected, and definitely not without moments where I questioned what I was doing.
I’ve gotten properly lost in places I didn’t know at all, not in a fun, exploring kind of way, but in a way where you start to realise you don’t actually know how to get back, and that feeling slowly turns into something more uncomfortable.
I’ve had moments where I felt unsafe and knew it, where I realised a bit too late that I probably should have been more careful, and there were times I made decisions thinking I’d just work it out, only to have that quiet panic of realising I actually might not.
Those moments don’t feel like a film when you’re in them, they feel real, and sometimes a bit overwhelming, and not something you’d choose to repeat.
That’s the part no one really talks about, because when people say do it for the plot, it sounds exciting, like everything will just fall into place and turn into a good story, and sometimes it does, but sometimes it’s also a bit reckless.
Sometimes you spend more than you meant to, or say yes when you probably shouldn’t have, and then you’re dealing with that decision for the rest of the month, and that side of it doesn’t really make it onto social media.
What we usually see is the finished version, the trips, the photos, the spontaneous moments that look effortless and fun, without any of the context around them.
We don’t see the stress, the budgeting, the overthinking, or the moments where it didn’t actually feel as good as it looked, and it’s very easy to compare your full life to something that’s been edited down to the best parts.
The strange thing is, those six months didn’t leave me worse off, and my life didn’t fall apart, even though I half expected it to at some point.
But what it did do was change how my life feels, because I have experiences now, actual ones, not just things I thought about doing or planned in my head, but real moments, even if they weren’t perfect at the time.
Now I’m taking a break for a bit, not because anything went wrong or because I regret it, but because I realised I don’t have to constantly be chasing something new to prove that I’m living.
You’re allowed to pause, to stay still for a while, and to not always be doing the next thing, and that doesn’t take anything away from what you’ve already done.
Before any of that, before the trips and the decisions and the chaos of figuring things out, I did something much smaller, which at the time felt like a big deal.
I went to the cinema by myself, and I remember overthinking it way more than I needed to, wondering if it would feel awkward, if people would notice, if I’d feel out of place sitting there on my own.
But as soon as the film started, none of that really mattered, and I actually enjoyed it properly, without distraction, without waiting on anyone else, and without trying to match someone else’s mood.
And that was the first time I realised I didn’t have to wait for other people to start living my life.
If you want to feel a bit more independent, it usually starts in moments like that, not in big, dramatic changes, but in small decisions where you do something slightly outside of your usual routine.
Reading a book in the park and staying a bit longer than you normally would Going somewhere on your own, even if it’s just the cinema Saying yes to something you’d usually talk yourself out of Starting a new hobby without worrying if you’ll stick to it Doing something just because you want to, without posting it or telling anyone
None of it feels huge at the time, and that’s kind of the point, because it’s not about completely changing who you are overnight.
But it does shift something, even if it’s small, and over time it makes your life feel a bit more like yours.
Because independence isn’t really about doing everything alone, it’s more about knowing that you can, and that you don’t have to rely on everything being perfect before you start.
Your life doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s, and it doesn’t need to make perfect sense all the time, because most of the time it won’t.
It doesn’t have to be perfectly planned, or aesthetic, or impressive, it just has to be yours, even if that means years of waiting, a few months of saying yes to everything, and then stepping back to figure it out again.
That’s still the plot.
