Are you there, Buddha? It's me Cristina...am I enlightened yet?

I would be lying if I said I didn't have expectations. I left everything behind for the better part of a year! Just me and the world...I imagined how each new place and experience would change me physically, mentally and spiritually into the person that I knew was inside me trying to break free. This was no mere "vacation"; I was on a vision quest!
And it seems like everyone around me supported this vision. I can't tell you how many people made references to the book/movie "Eat, Pray, Love". And although, I never saw it, I was on board...after all, most Julia Roberts movies have great happy endings. And even though I ate (Boy did I eat!) and prayed (in churches, cathedrals, mosques and temples) and even loved a little (a lady never tells!) as I arrive toward the end of my adventure, I feel quite ordinary...no worse...I feel the same. I'm still the same ball of nueroses I was before I began. And I gotta tell you, it's more than a little disappointing.
My first solo adventure was to Mali West Africa when I was 20. Barely out of my teens; I still saw myself as the shy fat girl that defined my self image during much of my youth. In Africa, I became a Nubian goddess. drumming and dancing 8hrs a day, I shed pounds and gained confidence. I did and saw things I never imagined. I came back changed.
Last summer, I found myself literally living in paradise yet feeling like I was trapped in a prison. Outside the sun was shining 360 days a year but I only noticed the rain. I remembered that time in Africa where I was focused and moving and happy. I wanted to recreate that feeling. So I went to Mexico and studied yoga and meditation for 8 hrs a day. I gained strength, lost weight and learned to stand on my head. I literally flipped my perspective and came back changed.
So...what gives?
Solo adventure...check.
Exotic locale...check.
challenging my body...check.
Transformation...uh...nope.
And maybe that's the lesson.
Maybe I have come to a place where I need to stop running toward the next adventure, the next once in a lifetime experience. Maybe this time I turn back and face that shy fat awkward girl. Because you know what? She's still there and still hurting and instead of taking her in my arms and squeezing her tight with love and compassion; I keep trying to change her.
As a dear friend, much much wiser than me said; I have got to make friends with that scared angry awkward judgemental girl inside of me and try to love that part of me that is kicking and screaming and raging against it all like an angst ridden hormonal teen.
I think my greatest adventure may be yet to come; that of being still and present and raw and broken. In a couple of weeks, I am literally "going home". I will be back in my parents house with no job, no obligations, only time. It's a place that scares me more than any foreign country ever could. But maybe, just maybe, it's a place where I can find my happy ending...