(originally published in 2014)

There are so many, many things to say. So many, many angles to take; so many ways to tell the story of my recent adventure through Chile and Argentina... I'm not quite sure where to begin.

This trip was rife with expectation - I was expecting it to fix my life.

I was expecting this trip to bring me clarity. To provide answers to all the questions that had been swirling around my head about work and relationships. To give me healthy habits back. To show me the value of time, of relaxation, of taking it easy. I expected to come back having found grace for my crazy landlord. This trip was going to sort me out.

This trip also worried the hell out of me. I legitimately thought I was going to die. That my plane would fall out of the sky, I would be hit by a car in a freak accident, I'd fall off the edge of a cliff, or that some dormant, terminal, disease would rear its head and appear in my body at just the point I was in the most remote parts of Chile. I was so worried that I purchased all the different travel insurances, looked up what happens to the possessions of 28 year old women without wills upon death. I connected my emergency contacts to each other - brought together lines of communications in case the worst happened. I have no explanation for why I felt this way - it is certainly not a type of anxiety I had ever felt before regarding travel, but from the moment I purchased the ticket, I thought I was going to die.

Spoiler alert - I didn't die and this trip didn't fix my life.

My life is still as messy as ever. I still go to Starbucks and order a latte with a piece of pumpkin loaf and feel guilty about it on multiple levels - from my personal dollars supporting big corporations to consuming all those wonderfully tasty useless calories that will likely give me cancer one day. I still worry about paying the bills, about the loans. I still have a crazy landlady and very little grace to deal with it. I still, on occasion, drink too much. Work is still both exciting and boring and I'm starting to believe that there is just nothing one can do about the boring moments... I am still in that 20's state of mind that occasionally has me wonder what is next, if what I am doing is what I am supposed to be doing and if it - any of it - whatever 'it' is - is really worth it. I still dream about falling in love with a boy and meeting in one of those crazy romantic ways that one only sees in Rom Com movies about the holidays (only to be supremely disappointed with each passing day that this doesn't happen). And I still dream about having one of those 'life-changing' New York moments when you meet someone on the street and they have the power to fulfil your dreams and change your life forever, introducing you to a new passion or pulling a talent out of you you didn't know you had (I probably watch too many movies). I still make stupid mistakes, say things I shouldn't and do mean things to people I love for not very good reasons. I am still a mess.

So, no, this trip didn't fix my life - I am no wiser nor better. But, while on this trip, my attitude toward life changed. And I feel different for it. I feel new.

Amid all of life's noise - the crazy landladies, the little and big things that go wrong on an almost daily basis, the messy relationships and bad decisions, I feel anchored. Something in me has shifted, in a way that feels permanent. In a way that I have never felt before. I can neither fully explain it or even understand where it came from and why it has suddenly appeared. Perhaps it was the wonder of experiencing a new culture or the magnificence of nature's beauty; Perhaps it was weathering the storms of cancelled flights, closed airports, language barriers and things just generally not going as planned - almost never - on our trip. Perhaps it was conversations I had or tears I cried. Perhaps it wasn't the trip at all. Perhaps this is a moment all 28 year olds have.

Whatever it was, when I landed at New York's La Guardia airport at 9am on a Wednesday morning, for the first time - ever - since moving to this city (with all the various trips and travel I have done since living in the city), landing here, in New York, filled me with genuine joy. I wasn't giving myself a pep-talk to 'just get through it', I didn't land looking forward to the next plane that would take me away, I didn't land with regret or with tears in my eyes... I was glad to be back. And more than just glad to be back on American soil, but glad to back in the City specifically - happy to be 'home' and excited to face the adventures and trials that were and are to come. When I realized how foreign this feeling was, it stopped me in my tracks - literally, I just stopped (and got yelled at by the guy walking behind me...). It stopped me because it was a new feeling, one which surprised me, but one that I liked and because at that moment I knew something was different in me; that something had changed.

I feel a new ownership of life. A new security and confidence in me as a person, in who I am and what I have to offer (however big or little) to those in the world around me. I feel a little more in control - of my moods, my words, my actions - and less as if I am living at the whims of the circumstances around me.

And so, yes, life is still messy. Work can still be boring. I should not have had that final cocktail last night... but, but that is okay because those things don't define me and I am finally starting to realize it.

So how was Chile? Argentina? How was my adventure to South America? It was good. Great even. And because I am still not above showing off - I will post photos and blog about the things people are probably more interested in hearing about; things such as the majesty of the mountains in Patagonia, the intensity of the sunset in the Chilean desert, the blueness of glacier ice when it has aged thousands of years, the steak, the Malbec, the Chilean hiking guides who thought my companion and I were 'not normal' girls (we think it was a compliment) or when upon learning my name, one guide immediately burst into fits of laughter as if I had just said the most hilarious joke (this one, we think, wasn't a compliment)... those stories too are worth telling. But, for me, the most important story of this trip is the one I've just laid out above.

So, I thought I was going to die. And, in a way, I suppose I did.