There are a lot of dreams I’ve let go – lots of disappointment and failure that I shoo away from my bedside each morning. I wake up each day in a life I never imagined for myself, in a place I never planned. I look back on it all and I try to understand what happened because I never saw this coming. I spent 9 years dreaming up a life that is no more. 5 years of it were spent planning and building a home I never really got to live in. I planted rose bushes that I will never see flower, trees that will grow tall and make shade I will never enjoy on a hot, summer afternoon.
I am not saying I am the only person this has happened to. I am not asking for pity. I am just trying to live again. It is harder than I ever thought it would be to let go of all that happened and find a new path.
I am trying to find my way – some direction – that will lead me away from all those painful memories and dreams that I left behind. At first, this was about things. I wanted to surround myself with beautiful things because I had lived for so long with nearly nothing but a dream and it seemed to me that using furniture, art, pottery, books, curtains, 400ct egyptian cotton sheets and beautiful fluffy towels would help define this new life. I am not sure that I succeeded in defining anything but it has given me a space to which I can retreat, a place where I feel safe enough to lie on my couch and mourn for everything I walked away from.
It has taken a great deal of casting about to realize that I have no idea what I am doing with my life. I am generally capable of getting out of bed each morning and going to work. I cook great food, write, laugh with my son. . . but I lack any plan for where I want to be in 10 years. I’ve always had a plan for where I would be in ten years and I knew that even if it changed, I still needed to have one. I am not sure what to do now that I find myself unable to invent one.
I’ve tried. I have planned everything from going back to school or finding a job in another town to moving to Italy so that I can live on a vineyard and make wine. When one of those plans falls through (as they all have because I don’t really want any of those things,) I find myself simply getting drunk enough that I can pass out and not dream.
I am not at a complete loss.
Even without a plan, I have recently come to realize a few, rather important, things.
- I need to be okay with all of this. I need to trust myself and know that it is my path, that I learn from it, that it might happen again and that I should be thankful for all of it because it is what drives and shapes me. It is impossible to imagine who I would be without all of this.
- Maybe I don’t need a plan. Maybe I don’t need to be in such a hurry to run away from myself. I think it might be time to stop and look at who I am rather than continue pretending to be someone I am not. I have done a lot of self reflection in the last 5 years but I am talking about dedicating time and energy to becoming the person I really want to be.
- I might need some help working through all of this. I have always been ridiculously, fiercely, stubbornly independent. I am starting to realize that it pushes people away and maybe it is time to start looking to others for help. I have been debating this one for a year (ridiculous!) and a lovely man I know has helped me realize what I need to do. I am not sure he knows he has done this but he’s been caring and patient as he’s explained to me what I do and how he feels about it. I am so thankful.
- I must write about all of it. I have always written about my life. I will sit down upset and distracted and sometimes it takes hours but writing focuses and relaxes me.
Some people exercise or paint – I write.
It started out as something that was just for me and I was terrified of people discovering my journals, my deepest thoughts. Revealing all those things made we weak, vulnerable. I hid my writing away for years – decades, actually. Then I decided to make it public.
Being open and honest about who I am and what I feel is one of the hardest things I have ever done but also one of the best. I am not even sure who reads this stuff but I am not going to hide anymore. The writing is for me. It is how I process and it is how I remember. I share it simply because I need to stop being afraid of people knowing who I am.
So I guess it boils down to this. Know what I want from life and ask for it. Stop being afraid. Find a good therapist. Be open and honest. Smile. Love back.
cheers to an awesome opportunity.
cheers to me imagining that i am standing in that space and
we are getting ready to open the doors to our first night.
cheers to something so fucking amazing that we can hardly believe it might actually happen.
thank you for this – it is pretty cool and it matters to me more than I ever thought it would.
let’s do it.
I have been eating food for nearly 30 years. It all started with my mom and dad – they both cooked everyday. We had a big garden from which I collected tomatoes, squash, beans, lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini, herbs. . . . I can remember going out to the garden to fetch a tomato, rinsing it, slicing it up and eating it while it was still warm from the sun. This was an after school snack.
I want more people to eat wonderful local food. I want my little boy to grow up into a world where farmers are your neighbors and you know the chickens your eggs come from.
I try to create this world one conversation or meal at a time. I think it is possible and so I go out into the world each day knowing that I have things to learn and things to teach.
i remember when i started thinking that maybe i was missing pieces of the puzzle and so it was better to make no decision than it was to make the wrong decision. i was 20. i remember being joyful. i remember loving my life and all the people in it. i remember losing that feeling and going to a very dark place where all of that was gone. it took me nearly a decade to come back and when i decided to start trusting and loving again and that didn’t go so well.
it’s been nearly 10 months since i decided i was not going to waste anymore time in that broken place. sometimes it still stings when i think about it.
i didn’t let go because i thought the bullshit was temporary. i thought he might suddenly want me in his life again. i thought i would have it in me to give that to him. i kept a little piece of it alive.
then one day i realized that i was really happy without all of the crap. i’d been telling myself i was better off but somehow it took a long time to move on. and it felt good to let go of ‘almost was’ and ‘might have been’. . .
i’m still thinking about it. our conversation last week. . .
it upset me.
what did i mean? you want me to define this without any offer of details regarding what you meant. that’s fine, i’ll tell the whole world, right now. at least, anyone who is paying attention.
i was absolutely truthful when i said that i think you’re wonderful and amazing and i am thankful to have you in my life. i am happy and it is because of you. i think about you when you are not near me. i want to see you and talk to you and laugh with you. i want to know about your life and tell you all about mine. i want to share your dreams. i feel alive when i am with you. it is simple. it is peaceful. it feels right.
it’s the least complicated thing i have ever known.
is that love?
i’m not willing to believe that love is this thing we imagine and never find. i have had young idealistic love. i have known the kind of love i thought would last forever. i have been so in love that i become blind to everything else in my life that is good and sweet. i have sacrificed pieces of me to the idea of love as though it would make it last longer or mean more. i have loved cheating, lying assholes and guys who would rather be stoned than with me. i have vowed to never love again. i have ended several pleasant relationships in the last year because they started to smell of whispers and promises and that thing i could not face being broken by. . . .
i can go through my whole life looking for love to end badly and thinking that i have never and will never find a love that comes with a ‘happily ever after’ in my crackerjack box or i can accept this beautiful thing that i have right now and just be happy when i am with you.
this is the first time i have had a lovely relationship paired with a respect that is present and obvious in every word and action. you tell me that you respect me and think i am smart but what matters is that all of your actions are infused with respect and so i know it without you saying it.
maybe i have learned from all the broken, failed loves and found something a little closer to that completely wordless ideal. regardless, i am terrified by not knowing what you feel because maybe i care a whole lot more than you do.
i like you so much that i want to look you in the eye, kiss you on the cheek, and smile as i walk away. cry a little but let you go before it takes hold of my life. stop it before it settles and becomes something that matters to me. i am terrified of it. i am afraid of losing myself in this. i am afraid of getting hurt.
“If you call me and ask me if I’m okay, I won’t be anymore.”
Many scholars, people far more distinguished and possessing larger vocabularies than I, have spent long hours looking into the meaning or purpose of life. They have written volumes on ethics and morals and how the world should be. I can not pretend to know enough that I might publish volumes on the topic. My personal purpose, the things that constitute right action in my life, this is evolving and changing at all times. I can not say that I know where I will end up in life as my brain is too small and self limiting to know my death day and what I will have figured out by then.
I am quite aware that I have been well trained in how to consume, finding happiness and satisfaction by spending money and possessing goods is the epitome of the consumer lifestyle. I wonder what my life would be like if I could shift my focus away from buying all the wonderful things that the industrial and technological revolutions have presented us with. I hope that you would not take this to mean that I would stop participating as a member of society. Nor do I wish to segregate myself from the outside world through the creation of some exclusive society or “cult.” To think the only choice we have is backwards or isolationist is to decide we have no choice at all.
To generate economic prosperity (and let us remain mindful of who our economy benefits because this is where the power sits) participation rates must remain high and it is best if it is on a voluntary basis. We all contribute to economic growth and at this point in time most of it is unsustainable. There is such a veil of complication; consumption, a desire for goods that is created by a need to fill the void that each of us feels. Richness defined by possessing goods, and by ones ability to overspend creating cradle to grave debt. Advertising and entertainment remind us how important it is to wear the right clothes, use the right cling wrap, and give the right diamond ring to show love for another well educated consumer.
I am a lover of beautiful things. I prefer items that are personal and expressive, objects that have been given a life by someone. These are things that we cherish and use with care and love. By its very nature, mass production creates a conformist mentality, losing originality and personalization in favor of having the very coolest thing that everyone else has too. I am a lover of the world around me, of the beauty that is created by natural forces we can not perceive or explain. Wilderness is disappearing at the hand of man, in the name of economic progress, resource management, and unsustainable population expansion. I can not help but see destruction when I look around. I see waste and greed and hedonistic consumption that lacks self-awareness. This is not true of all cultures or people in my life, but certainly I believe it to be true of our society in general.
Is it possible to live a life that is intentional and deliberate? Can I find a way to derive joy from meaningful work. Is it possible to find some happiness and balance in this world. It so easy to dismiss these choices as backwards granola fed hippie ideals. Many do. It is so easy to choose the 40+ hour work week and buy food produced with slave and child and migrant labor in some unnamed town/city/state/country suffocating under the cloak of capitalism. It seems the obvious choice to spend $130.00 on a pair of jeans produced in Indonesia by little girls for only pennies a day. Media of all sorts tells us that those jeans are very stylish and that I will look better and be happier if I have them. I find myself wondering who it is that has such power over us as to have destroyed the ideals of local economy, self sufficiency, and financial independence. I find myself defending my choices.
Why is it that our society rewards and glorifies large, corrupt, multinational corporations whose operations result in the repression and destruction of self sufficient, indigenous cultures to the exclusion of all other choices. I am often frustrated when I realize what a grip this relatively tiny, elite group of individuals has on our socio-economic belief system. Explain, justify, convince. I will have none of it. There are powers with far more influence and money trying to suppress or else make money off the choices that I would exalt.
I simply wish to live my life. And for the others, the ones who would degrade, question, or even openly ridicule the path I choose I ask only for respect and the ability to live my life in peace. I choose a path that endeavors to do no harm. I choose a path that may one day be openly accepted and encouraged within our culture but that few seem to recognize as viable, or else they are so threatened by my choices that mockery and arguments challenging the legitimacy of my path seem the best course of action when the issue arises. I do not need plastic goods, petroleum by products, promoted as easy to use and easy to throw away when their ‘useful life’ is over; filling landfills and cluttering the earth for millennia. I do not need another one of this or more of that to take up space on a shelf. I do not need cable tv to fill my head with truths written with the help of corporate funding and providing suggestions of ways to spend my life energy – converted into cash money – via the federal reserve.
I have set out to do something different and sometimes I succeed at that. There are some things I think I do well and things I fail miserably at. All I can do is cultivate self awareness for this is better than walking through life blind and deaf to how I fit into this world.
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