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You’re Not Imagining It: They Took That From You
How energetic colonization happens in everyday life and what to do about it
The first time I went to Las Vegas, I had just turned 21, and a coworker I really liked spontaneously invited me on a road trip out there. I said yes without overthinking it for a change, and that turned out to be a life-changing decision.
This trip was my first time traveling out of town as an adult. Without my family, without needing to ask someone else for permission, and without anyone else dictating the entire itinerary. That alone made it feel different. Bigger somehow, and magical in a way I didn’t yet understand.
And I had a blast on that trip.
I loved everything about Las Vegas. The lights. The colors. The sounds and the strangeness of it all. The way there was always something unexpected around every corner. I’d never been anywhere even remotely like that before, so it was very new and different — qualities I didn’t always like in a place as a young person, but that somehow worked in Vegas.
The whole city felt like freedom. And I walked away from that experience feeling awake and alive. More myself.
For years, I went back regularly, and it always felt like stepping into that same strange fever dream…
