Not gonna lie. This week has not been easy. A dysfunctional family is something that is unsettling to everyone, and eventually you learn to roll with the punches. But then things continued their downward spiral as one day this week I got a phone call that let me know that some things weren't going to be the same and that my heart wasn't going to feel safe and secure as it has been for several months. The past few days I have been raw, angry, saddened, and any normal day has the slightest tinge of gray to it. I'm going to admit that I haven't been my best self. When something abrupt and awful happens to you, you sometimes want to break everything and scream until you have no voice left and all you have are tears to release. When I was told by someone very special in my life that things weren't going to continue to be the same between us, I felt an earthquake beginning in my feet, which traveled upwards, spreading to my hands, my head. My heart jumped into my throat as I realized that a day once dreaded had actually come after months of security and happiness. My world came crashing down around me, then built itself back up again in some kind of grotesque rewind scenario. Living day to day when it feels like only half your heart is beating and you no longer feel it as well as you used to is hard. Everyday routines are boring somehow, but frustrating at the same time. You feel like you're owed better, but maybe, a voice whispers, you're not. Because what you had was maybe what you deserved. Sometimes I feel like I deserve things because of the fact that I exist. What's been making these past couple of days bearable is that I am beginning to seek advice, and I am beginning to voice my frustrations, my anger, and some fears and insecurities going forward into this slightly less predictable future. At one point in time, I had things planned out. I thought I was heading for that moment of happily ever after, but sometimes books that have that triumphant moment still have that chapter and a half to go where everything plunges back into chaos, and just when our favorite tv/movie protagonist has saved the day and you think things are going to be happy for more than a few minutes, something incredibly tragic happens and you have the rug ripped out from under you. But I think it's only when you begin to address the loss and you're able to grieve it properly, do you begin the process of letting go. Given that it happened to me just a couple days ago, I know that I'm not finished yet. But talking things out and revisiting the memories are helping with the transition into a new point in my life. Will a future chapter of my life include this person again? time and the heart will tell as to if I'm ready to have him back and if my heart is open to the possibility of starting over. While this has been heartbreaking and frustrating to go through, I'm starting to realize that I have been given space to decide that although it's a hard transition, it's one where I can make things happen for myself and learn how to start over in different ways. I can reinvent myself, and decide what my boundaries are. It's also a time to revisit memories, and learn which ones to keep and which ones to let go of. Although I haven't exactly lived for very long, it's an odd life and sometimes I feel like I could fit in with immortals (although all ever talked about are fictional). When they're described to us in books and movies, many of them have centuries of history written on their faces, yet they learn to continue with time as it ebbs and flows, and maybe let the years lived show on their faces and in their scars every now and then.
I identify strongly with this speech because the Doctor is addressing the many memories he has, and some of them are beautiful and some of them are tragic, but he doesn't let the weight of them destroy him ultimately, which is really encouraging in times like this. The heart is at times an unpredictable force, but life is still the most unpredictable as it gives us things to keep, things to learn, and things to let go of.
Decisions are hard. I really understand what the Doctor was saying when he said that sometimes the only decisions that are available to make are bad ones, but there's still the matter of choosing. I understood that quote on a deep level: take for instance, when Alan Turing built the machine that decoded the German's Enigma codes. In the movie adaptation of Alan's life, they decoded a message about a ship full of civilians and soldiers being bombed that day, but the problem was was they couldn't alert anyone to what they had decoded because they didn't want the Germans to know that their message had been translated. The ramifications of choosing between life and death weighs heavier on the soul than most decisions and choices that we make in life. I didn't have to weigh between which lives are worth saving and which ones are not. Not now, anyway. I simply had to choose whether or not I wanted to go overseas this year for my junior year of college. For many who have gone before, this opportunity offers growth in an area of the world that's very unfamiliar, and other opportunities like learning another language and getting to know the people in a community with traditions that are their own which are there for outsiders to learn about. To have the chance to get to do something like that is what I've wanted to do my whole life. Growing up I just felt like I didn't belong in small places and that I was supposed to do more. I have been exploring that at my school at minnesota, and sometimes coming home after break I felt like I was better suited to a big diverse city like Minneapolis. Being evacuated in early march because of covid, I had to adjust to being back home sooner than I thought was going to happen, but sometimes life happens and pulls the rug out from under you, which also happens to throw off anything you might have planned in your calendar. For the most part, I feel relief, because in talking to friends and family, all have told me that it's a good idea to stave off my plans and work on finding other ways to keep life happening for me this year. When it comes to other emotions, I feel sad, and disappointed because I feel like I didn't do enough to help me get to my goal of what I wanted to do. But the feeling of not doing enough in my life to be successful has been a constant companion, borne from past parental relationships and mindsets that I kept to survive in hard circumstances. This time I think, will be a respite to work on trusting God and having faith that everything is supposed to work out the way it's supposed to. Not my will but His alone, right? I have tears to shed and time to think about how I can take these next couple of months to get closer with family, continue the work I've been doing in counseling, and the beginnings of the foundation of my future and what the next few years will look like for me. Please be praying that I figure out ways to be vulnerable with others about how I feel in this time, and that I also learn how to vulnerable with God during this hard time. It's difficult to lay something like this down before His feet and surrender, but I think it's something I've been needing to learn the meaning of for a long time. If anything, this is what gives me comfort; the fact that even though it hurts to make this kind of decision and stay in a familiar place even when I long to be somewhere I've never been before, here's what I do know: that God is not disappointed in me and never will be. This also gives me comfort as well, and if you're having a bad time of things yourself, I hope this helps where needed.
Thanks so much for reading guys, and happy friday!
