Go West

Along my journey, I have often felt a spiritual connection to The Universe, sometimes initiated through music. Go West (Pet Shop Boys 1993 version) was one such song for me. It wasn’t just the melody or the energy. It was the promise tucked inside the words. We will start life new. At the time, that line didn’t feel like poetry. It felt like instruction.

So, two years after its release, I went west.

Not all the way to some imagined coastline, but far enough. Dallas became my version of that promise. A place where I could step out of the shape I had been living in and try on something more honest.

It wasn’t instant. There was no single moment where everything clicked into place. There were missteps. Wrong turns. Nights where I questioned everything. That part never makes it into the song, but it belongs in the story.

Still, even in the uncertainty, something had changed. I could feel it in the way I moved through the world. In the way I spoke. In the way I no longer felt the need to shrink certain parts of myself just to be understood.

And over time, I began to understand another line that once felt almost too simple: life is peaceful there.

Not perfect. Not easy. But peaceful in a deeper way.

Looking back now, I can see that going west was never really about where I ended up. It was about the decision to move. To trust that the life waiting for me somewhere else might be more aligned than the one I was holding onto.

We all have a version of “west.”

A direction that calls to us, even when it doesn’t make complete sense. A pull toward something that feels both uncertain and necessary.

The hardest part is not the journey. It is the moment before it begins. The moment where you decide whether to stay where you are… or follow the quiet voice that says there is more waiting for you.

I followed mine. And it changed everything. So whatever your “go west” is, listen to it.

You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to be willing to take the first step and see where the path leads.

Sometimes, that one decision is the beginning of the life you were meant to live all along.