I’ve been on Holbox Island for almost a month now, and somehow this is the first time I’ve sat down to write about it.
Which feels a little backwards considering I’ve spent months writing about everything else — my past, my marriage, my identity crisis, my Spanish struggles — while this tiny island has just been over here quietly existing, being ridiculously beautiful.
(And honestly, fresh seafood, turquoise water, and daily sunsets are a pretty compelling argument that maybe I don’t need to overanalyze everything all the time.)
But apparently, that is not the version of me who shows up to write.
Because today, while sitting here in Mexico — volunteering at a hostel on the island of Holbox, in the Yucatán, about two hours north of Cancun — something unexpected came up.
Nearly seventeen years ago, I was also in Mexico.
Except back then, I was two days away from getting married.
Maybe that has something to do with why writing about my marriage and my relationship started to feel a little bit heavy.
To some people, it might sound like I’m waxing poetic about a moment long ago.
Like I’m sitting here feeling nostalgic about the life I once had.
But the truth is, when I think about our wedding, I feel surprisingly little.
Not sadness.
Not longing.
Not regret.
Just… neutrality.
It takes me back to being in 10th grade American history class, opening up one of those giant textbooks to some random page with a timeline of a major historical period and seeing all the events neatly laid out.
And before anyone starts thinking I’m some sort of history buff — I am very much not.
In fact, every time I meet people while traveling and they ask me about U.S. history, I am quickly reminded that maybe I should have paid a little more attention.
But I do think there is something interesting about timelines.
They give us the facts.
The dates.
The events.
The major moments.
They tell us what happened.
But they don’t tell us what it felt like to be there.
That’s how I can look back on my marriage now.
I can see the timeline.
The beginning.
The middle.
The end.
The facts are all there.
But the facts alone don’t tell the full story.
They don’t tell you who you were when you were living through those moments.
They don’t tell you what questions were quietly forming underneath the surface.
They don’t tell you what you knew, what you didn’t know, or what parts of yourself hadn’t fully emerged yet.
And that’s the strange thing about looking back at a life you once fully believed in.
Because the version of me who stood in Mexico seventeen years ago, about to get married, wasn’t pretending.
She wasn’t knowingly walking into something she would eventually leave.
She believed in the life she was building.
Sometimes we forget that when we look back at our younger selves.
We assume that because we know how the story ended, we must have known all along.
But we don’t.
We only know what we know from the place we are standing now.
Back then, I had a different understanding of myself.
A different understanding of love.
Of commitment.
Of what a life was supposed to look like.
That’s the part I’ve been sitting with.
Not that I was wrong.
Not that everything before was a mistake.
But that I changed.
Sometimes the things we build are exactly what we need at the time we build them.
Until one day, we realize we’ve become someone who needs something different.
That doesn’t make the previous chapter a failure.
It just makes it a chapter.
Something can be meaningful.
Something can be real.
Something can hold love and importance.
And still have an ending.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately because I’ve recently started teaching yoga again.
And I’ve noticed that the intentions I keep coming back to are always centered around going deeper.
Finding more depth in a posture.
More depth in the breath.
More depth in the moments where we get quiet enough to actually listen.
And I’m not pretending I’ve invented some revolutionary new yoga concept here.
Trust me, the yoga intention wheel did not need my help spinning.
But I do find it interesting that these are the themes I’m naturally drawn to right now.
Because maybe they aren’t just yoga themes.
Maybe they’re life themes.
The idea that we can trust ourselves enough to go a little deeper.
Not to force.
Not to push.
But to uncover.
The ending of my marriage didn’t just close one door.
It opened a series of others.
Doors that led me to question things I had never stopped to question.
Doors that led me inward.
And the further I go, the more I realize the work is never really finished.
There is always another layer.
Another question.
Another part of yourself waiting to be uncovered.
The goal was never to become someone completely different.
It’s having the courage to keep meeting yourself exactly where you are.
-A
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