"practice non choose the bottom life. do you hear me. practice you lot hear me. choose the life that is. yours. the life that is seducing your lungs. that is dripping down your mentum."

-Nayyirah Waheed, Nejma

Should I stay or should I go.

I think that'southward a shit song from the eighty'southward, but the title does highlight a very important question we've all had to ask ourselves at least one time in our life: is information technology time to leave? Does this task/ human relationship/ city/ projection/ friendship serve me anymore? Do I stay and work it out? Or do I go?

Over the final few years I've done my off-white share of leaving.

I've left people, jobs, plans, projects, friendships and cities. Each time it is gut-wrenching, each fourth dimension trying to decide wether to stay or go can exist overwhelming. What'due south the right conclusion? What if I exit, and and so change my heed? What if this is merely a phase? I get it. Then here are some definite markers I have learnt to trust that bespeak when is a good time yous've outgrown something, that it's fourth dimension to move on.

i.You experience like your gut is trying to tell you something, only you ignore information technology.

I was eighteen when I had my first "grown up" relationship. Nosotros were together for most three years. Simply it was around the 2-and-a-one-half year mark that I started to get this niggling feeling that… maybe I did not want to be in this human relationship anymore. The trouble was, I couldn't justify to myself why. He was ridiculously intelligent, handsome, kind and his parents were so dope I low-key wanted them to adopt me, too (actually, I withal speak to his mom to this day. When I wrote my showtime sexually explicit piece and posted it on the internet this yr she was all "great job, my girl!" Like I said, dope.) It seemed ungrateful, almost, to want to throw information technology all away.

But there was this voice, this undercurrent, that almost the end got louder.

This is not your person, it would say, which I would constantly ignore, distract myself, refuse to look information technology in the eye, like a dog refusing to wait at the giant shit information technology merely took on the rug.

I didn't practice anything about it. Which brings me to clue 2, a clear indicator that it could peradventure be time to get out:

2. You lot cease striving to be a better person

Although my encephalon refused to acknowledge my boyfriend and I were not the right people for each other, my torso knew, and my actions followed accordingly.

I stopped showing upwards as my best self. Becoming lazier, I was more than inclined to fight and less inclined to come with solutions. I resorted to behaviour I usually hated; we bickered, I was catty, I was increasingly passive aggressive. I didn't care if he saw me as childish. I didn't care how he saw me at all. While I was too scared to leave the familiarity of the relationship physically, I had started to check out emotionally. Eventually, surprise surprise, he broke up with me.

And while I yet recollect he is 1 of the best humans on the planet, I wish I'd ended it sooner. There doesn't e'er have to be areasonto leave a relationship. Or a city. Or a projection. Or a friendship. Or annihilation.

Sometimes your gut just simply says "no." And information technology'south ok to mind to that.

Similarly, when I a few years later, when I knew I wanted to go the hell out of Perth but didn't nevertheless want to acknowledge it to myself, my behaviour said it all. I started drinking more, exercising less, being less mindful in my relationships with others, and by and large I just became more negative.

So yous detect yourself non fifty-fifty liking yourself in the relationship, (or job, or friendship, or city, or lifestyle) it could be time to expect elsewhere. I feel similar your person, your friendships, the place you live and your task should make you lot want to grow and aggrandize. When you start shrinking and not really caring that you lot are… and then that's some stuff begging to exist looked at.

3. Y'all observe yourself shrinking/ warping/ bending to fit in or don't feel like you are able to truly exist yourself

I beloved to overthink. I love to chase trains of thought, I love deep, vulnerable discussions on the wrong side of 3am. Every bit a dreamer, a truth seeker, a lover, I am furiously passionate about the earth so, much that I desire to drink in everything I can about it. And I practice this through stories. I do this through thinking, imagining and through discussions with people with dreams as big every bit mine.

A few years ago, when I lived in Perth, I felt like I was the only weirdo in my social circle who felt this way. When I started to talk almost the stuff I wanted to talk about I often felt close downward, like.

Here she goes again.

Yous think likewise much, Caity.

You're also emotional.

You're too intense.

But like… chill.

I tried to sit down at Friday drinks with my overpriced espresso martini and ask my friends well-nigh nigh their working week and university assignments while trying to ignore every prison cell in my torso wanting to inquire insteadHow practice you feel about that? When was the final fourth dimension you cried? What'south your biggest fear? What'due south your biggest regret? Would your 13 yr old self be stoked with what yous're doing now? What'southward your relationship with the universe, if any? What desires keep you awake at night?

These were people I loved to the end of the earth.

Nevertheless I ever went domicile feeling anxious and unsatisfied, like I'd had a sip of water but hadn't quenched the thirst. I couldn't consolidate these ii ideas in my head and I felt like a bad person. And in retrospect, information technology wasn't really fair to blame my friends for truths I hadn't been prepared to face; I just but didn't fit in that scene, in that country, in that lifestyle at that specific indicate in fourth dimension.

4. You feel like "too much" for the people around you

I had a friend from Perth who lived in San Francisco. I remember at the time thinking it was the coolest thing always he'd managed to leave Perth to live in Sydney, Montreal and finally San Francisco. We were kindred souls in terms of nosotros both wanted to discuss ideas for hours, we both wanted to create big things in this life, and we both knew that grateful every bit we were for information technology, Perth was not the place for united states of america.

"Perth is not your identify, and these people aren't your tribe" a he said on the phone to me one night, after I called him in the centre of the night in a nearly panic-assault saying "I feel stuck and misunderstood and I don't know what to do."

"It doesn't mean y'all don't love them," he continued. "You but know they're not giving you what you need right at present. So gear up your sights elsewhere."

Shortly after that I moved to El Salvador, on the other side of the world. From the commencement I showed upward honest with what I needed. I needed to be around women who wanted to surf, so I felt motivated to do the aforementioned. I needed smart humans who would be more than happy to sit and attempt unpick the mysteries of the universe with me.

I needed a place where emotions expert and bad would exist seen normal and valid, and as latinos pretty much invented beingness passionate and emotional no one really raised an eyebrow when I was loud or sad or expressive or passionate or whatsoever. I felt seen. I felt validated. I saw myself really reflected in the people effectually me.

I have non felt similar "too much" in two years.

It's not that I'm now satisfied and settled and the work is washed.

I'm still at odds with sure ideologies in this country, widely held beliefs that grate against everything I stand for. There'south also some problematic elements in the whole expat culture that don't totally sit well with me. What I'm proverb is I just feel closer to where I demand to exist than two years agone. And in 2 years time I hope I'1000 even closer nonetheless. To a sense of home, belonging and unspoken understanding. Information technology's what we all want, isn't information technology?

Information technology has been almost like a pressure valve has deflated. I no longer sit at girls drinks on a Friday night thinking 'what is wrong with me? Why isn't this enough for me?'

Not only accept I stopped peppering my one-time friends into conversations they simply don't want to exist in (which, I've learnt, is fine- not everyone wants to talk nearly 'the interconnectedness of everything in their reanimation. Some people want to just, similar, chill) it's almost similar, when I talk to my quondam friends I am more settled. I'm non pushing them to requite me something they tin't give me, because I now have that elsewhere. I can just enjoy them, as they are, and them me.

You tin can love your friends silly, merely also know you need to find more people who align more closely to the kind of person y'all want to be and kind of experiences yous want to accept in this world. That'south okay.

And then, stay or get?

Leaving isn't simple. It's actually i of the most terrifying things nosotros as humans have to do.  Leaving something like a job or relationship or city means creating a massive tectonic shift in the foundations upon which nosotros build our identities, and that can cause some ruptures, take some time to adjust, leave us feeling scared and weird and non knowing what lies ahead of u.s.. It's not always a thousand spring. It can be a gentle dance between organized religion and fear. Maybe at the start your fear makes you lot stay.

Fright in that location will be no more love.

Fright you will never observe a better job.

Fear you will never notice people who actually get you.

Fear yous're being ungrateful, that information technology's all in your head.

But slowly, the faith builds. It's a gentle dance. The faith grows, the fear shrinks. Again, a fiddling more than. Until one 24-hour interval you wake up and the faith is bigger than the fear. You believe information technology at present. You trust. Y'all experience ready to footstep into the unknown.

If you lot are getting that pocket-size voice in your heart saying leave! leave! go out! Information technology'south there for a reason. If y'all feel like you are beingness called elsewhere, if yous feel like your heart yearns for more than, listen to it.

Seriously, listen to it.