“A year turned into several years, and several years turned into all the years. One morning you wake up with more life behind you than in front of you, not being able to understand how it’s happened.”
— Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here
Somewhere along the way, time stopped feeling like something I moved through and started feeling like something I carried. Years folded into each other quietly, without ceremony. Responsibilities accumulated. Wins went uncelebrated. Rest was postponed, again and again, for a version of the future where I might finally feel deserving of it.
I think this is an oldest daughter thing. Learning early how to hold weight. Learning how to be dependable before learning how to be kind to myself. Living with the unspoken belief that if I stop, even briefly, everything might slip. That rest is a risk I cannot afford. That achievement is a requirement, not a choice. That love must be earned through effort and vigilance and doing more than asked or required.
So when I decided to take myself to the USVI, it wasn’t to escape my life. It was to interrupt a pattern. I went looking for tranquility and solace, yes, but more than that, I went to see what would happen if I stopped negotiating my right to rest.
St. John felt like home to my nervous system almost immediately. Not in a dramatic way. But in a quieter one. The kind of home that doesn’t demand proof or productivity. The island met me with fullness: the color of the water changing with the light, trees that seemed unhurried, animals moving through the world without apology. Nothing there asked me to perform.
Some mornings, I woke up early to watch the sunrise from my Airbnb. No plans, no urgency. Just light arriving when it was ready, filling the world slowly.
Some days were shaped by a simple quest: finding a turtle. And when I finally did, something in me went completely still. I floated above it, suspended in the Atlantic waters, and for once, my mind did not rush ahead or pull me backward. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to name the moment or make it useful. I stayed there longer than I meant to, my body completely still.
“You live in a single moment. I live in a thousand.”
— Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising
I have lived in a thousand moments at once for as long as I can remember. Anticipating, planning, compensating. Carrying what has been and what might be and what could go wrong if I stop paying attention. On St. John, something softened. The thousand moments loosened their grip, if only briefly, and I learned what it felt like to live inside just one.
There is something humbling about the ocean. It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t explain itself. It doesn’t apologize for taking up space. It moves with its own timing, and in doing so, gives permission to exist. Stillness found me without force: in floating without effort, in watching waves repeat themselves endlessly, in letting color and motion be enough.
What surprised me most was not the peace, but how quickly my body recognized it. How natural it felt once I stopped resisting it. The constant internal urgency quieted. The fear that rest might make me less capable or less worthy faded. I realized how long I had been equating pressure with care, effort with love.
And somewhere between the water and the mornings, a gentler realization settled in. I hadn’t been cruel to myself. I hadn’t been withholding love. I had been loving myself the only way I knew how: through responsibility, through vigilance, through doing what needed to be done.
“As I could, I loved you.”
— Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch
A way of honoring the past without excusing the cost of it. A way of understanding that my ambition, my endurance, my refusal to rest did not come from self-loathing, but from a belief that this was how worth was maintained.
This trip gave me more than memories. It gave me evidence. Evidence that peace is not a luxury. Evidence that I can plan a life, pay for it, drive myself through it, without needing to be relentless. Evidence that independence does not require self-denial. That rest does not undo ambition. That I can carry responsibility without letting it consume me.
The islands did not fix my life. They did not erase the weight I carry. But they showed me that I can carry it differently. With less clenchedness. With more presence. With more color.
And when I think about who I am now, returning from that stillness back into motion, I know this to be true:
“I am not ruined. I am ruination.”
— Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising
Not broken by what I have carried. Not diminished by choosing rest. But sharpened. Claimed. Fully my own.
P.S. Logistics and travel notes can be found here <LINK COMING SOON>. This essay was written by me and edited for clarity and flow with AI assistance.
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