I’ve known all along

Written ramblings have been my thing for years. Whenever life gets overwhelming or there’s just something in my head that needs sorting it inevitably comes out on paper and gets filed away with all the previous ramblings.

I stumbled across one written on 16 April 2012. Around that time I was struggling with depression and had finally grown the balls to walk away from someone who had drained a decade and some change of my life. The relationship had ended 6 years before that but we’d ‘stayed friends’, which was the dumbest thing to do because the closure never came.

The hope was moving stateside would close that chapter for the last time by being geographically inaccessible. Yeah, that didn’t work either. After finally deciding to cut all ties the depression kicked in in Technicolor and the ramblings began. This is an short extract from then:

There have been places on earth where the peace has been all encompassing and instant.  It’s like my soul has returned to where it came from, like I’d reached a destination I’d been searching for since the beginning of time. Home.  My soul found its home; that home is no longer where I am.  A piece of myself has been ripped away and I don’t know how to get it back.  It’s just gone.  Having found my home, it was as if, after a million life times, I could finally just exist in a state of rest; like there was no longer any need to struggle; no need to continue searching; I was found.  For a reason I cannot fathom, I’m no longer in that place.  The struggle and search has begun again, the rest is over.  The inner peace has passed; I’m back on the road to somewhere I can’t find.  You must be wondering why I can’t just go back, I wish it were that simple. 

My soul felt complete in Scotland.  There’s something about that land, the desolation of the Highlands, the snow on the mountains, the open spaces, the dark waters of the Lochs, the music, the energy, it speaks to my soul like nothing ever has before or since.  My soul feels as old as that land, like I was born with it a million years ago; that we came into existence at the same time; our energy is the same.  In the cold beauty of the Highlands, it feels like I could walk into the mountains and never be lost.  I could be nowhere and home at the same time.  My soul lives in those lakes and mountains.  I don’t know how, I don’t know why, I just know that I have been drawn to that place since birth.  I’ve never understood, but it was like an inevitable journey that I couldn’t escape. 

Against all odds and obstacles that I put in my own way, I found my way there.  Home.  To arrive at a place you’ve never seen, never experienced, and to feel in your core that you know every inch of it, that you’ve never been away, is something I cannot describe.  Peace that cannot be put into words.  For that moment, all is right with the world, nothing else makes sense.

Everyone should experience that profound belonging at least once in their lives.  It’s not a grey area.  Once you have felt it, you will know.  It will hit you with the force of a bolt of lightning and shake your core in a way you’ve never known. That moment becomes the dividing line of what came before and what comes after. 

Sometimes life requires nothing less than an empty-handed leap of faith into the void.  Deep breath, close your eyes, say a prayer and step over the edge.  Someone will be there to catch you.

A pic I took in 2005 on my 2nd trip to Scotland. Roses in the snow

Reading that with the benefit of 4 years worth of hindsight I realise I’ve known all along. Earlier today there was a cloud of doubt about whether moving across the Atlantic again is the right thing to do.

Yes. It is.

Author: MacScottie

I'm a South African-born American who dabbles in writing, photography and cookery. I lived in England for 6 years before moving to America. My first trip to Scotland was in 2003 and it was love at first sight. 4 trips later & I'm now on a quest to find a way back to my soul-home in Scotland. I've picked up favourite foods in each place I've lived so I'm a product of all the places I've been. A sprinkling of this, a dash of that and in an emergency, a generous splash of Scotch!

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