Crawling out of my skin

In some weird way, moving here has been like crawling out of my skin. Its like a snake whose old skin had gotten too small, and it was time to go through inconveniences of various levels to get out of the old skin so that it could keep going. When your skin is all old and tight, its not easy to remove – you need to rub against rough surfaces, move through difficult terrain, generally agitate your surroundings to facilitate the process. The end result, of course, is potential for growth, but before you can grow, your newly-exposed skin has to toughen up, to get used to being the only thing protecting your insides from the outside.