Am I doing the right thing?

As you all know I am planning on making a move from Belize to Ecuador in the coming months.  What you don’t know is that I’ve spent many long days and many sleepless nights since returning from my exploratory trip to the coast of Ecuador.  My dilemma is whether I am making the move for the right reasons or am I just making a change that will just be that, a change that solves nothing?  Most if you know the reasons that I made what appeared to be a sudden departure from the U.S. and I won’t go into them here.  Needless to say many of you thought I was crazy for giving up a lucrative and personally rewarding job and the relative comforts of  the U.S. for the unknowns of a 3^rd world country. Some of you thought I was just escaping temporarily and would soon be back home and normal.  That really has nothing to do with my restlessness though.  My unease is whether moving to a new country will end the pain that I suffer every day of my life and let me get on with my life.

I’ve loved every minute of my life in Hopkins.  I’ve met and become close friends with some wonderful people.  Some, who like me, escaped to Belize to deal with their own personal issues.  Some whom I’ve met at Kismet, who came as guests and left as family. (By the way there is a sign above the kitchen door that says just that and it is so true.) Many who return year after year and sometimes more often than that who, while they are here, change my outlook on life for those brief moments.  I’ve built a life here that to some may see boring.  Most days all I do is fish and lay in my hammock.  Other days I take the occasional trip to the reef to fish and snorkel with friends and guests, and from time to time I do some traveling around Central America.  But for the most part I fully embrace retirement and do nothing.  And while it’s been paradise I still suffer from the reminders of what once was.  Reminders that invade my thoughts in quiet moments and others that smack me right in the face when I least expect it. Sometimes it’s a song, sometimes a smell, sometimes a sound, sometimes it’s something I see, and sometimes there just is no reason at all.  Feelings that just slam into my head and heart and are so hard to deal with that sometimes cause me to sink into a depression that may last for days.  There are times when I don’t open my door until Trish comes knocking after not seeing me for a week or more to make sure that I’m still alive. I'm tired of feeling this way and hurting so much.  In the past few months its becoming harder to deal with all of this so I thought that maybe a change of venue might be what I need in order to change my outlook, seeing a different landscape, meeting new people, fishing different waters.  Sometimes change can be a good thing.  So I began my search for a new home.

But will moving really help me or will being somewhere with no memories and no friends make it worse?  Will leaving the comfort of the known for the uncertainty of somewhere unknown make a difference?  Will leaving friends who understand me and what I’m going through make matters worse?  Or will making new friends, who have no idea of what I suffer from and am going through, and not speaking of the past, help to change my thinking and help settle my soul?  Will that really solve anything or will it make it worse?  That is my conundrum.  I’m not asking for advice and not looking for sympathy.  I’m just using you all as a sounding board and hoping that expressing my feelings out loud (actually in writing) that maybe it will make me look at all this differently, from a different perspective or whatever.  And don’t worry about my state of mind because I am definitely not one of those who would solve his problem through drugs, or alcohol, or drastic measures.  It’s not in my nature to do anything like that.  I’m just hoping that I’ll figure it all out one day, finding the peace that I am searching so hard for.