Letters from Higo 📮🇯🇵

Location: Home

Dear you (whomever you are),

It’s almost midnight, tomorrow I am gonna leave for orientation in a different city.

This is not the real beginning – not yet- but it’s the first thread being pulled loose from the comfort of knowing everything.

My suitcase is zipped. My ID is tucked away in my bag. Boarding passes printed and stowed. I keep opening my suitcases like something new will appear inside. Like the right shoes, or the right words.

I spent all day in that strange, slow motion you move through when you know life is about to tilt. The sky looked normal. My room looked normal. But everything felt like a last. I said goodbye to someone and realized I wouldn’t see them for at least a year. I threw out a shampoo bottle and felt weirdly sentimental about it.

The small things are the ones catching me off guard.

I’m not afraid. Just full – of what I don’t know yet.

Sometimes I wonder if everyone feels like this before they leave.

That quiet ache. That strange waiting.

Not fear. Not sadness. Not even excitement.

If you’ve ever stood at the edge of something and felt the ground change under you – what helped you stay steady?

I’m asking gently, not urgently. Just wondering aloud.

with one foot still here,

Ari