My life was in constant turmoil
from age 19 to age 28. That’s probably a fairly typical description of most
young adults’ lives, and I know that my personal experience was both more
difficult and easier than others depending on who you talk to (I say this to
acknowledge the relativity of my experience, but from this point I will only
speak about my own feelings). During
that time, I blew around like paper in the wind. I worked at around 25
different jobs. I moved around 30 times. I drank a lot. I fell in love
thrice…which made me smile a lot, dream a lot, and cry and scream a lot. I gave
birth to two babies during that time period and also didn’t give birth to two
babies. And in between the babies, I even got married. I was engaged once,
before my husband proposed, and desperately wanted to marry a different someone
for 6 long years in between the two engagements. I’d call that tumultuous,
wouldn’t you?! I finally took the reins
of my own life and it was because of three people: one to exhaust my love and
faith, and reservoir of sanity, one to tell me I was a lost cause, and one to
believe in my redemption whole-heartedly. And as much as it hurt, and still
hurts to this day, that I had to decide to stop pursuing what I was pursuing
and change directions, it was the right choice and it proved to be the most
utilitarian choice. I am generally happy and fulfilled. That didn’t seem to be
in the cards for me towards the end of that near decade. Now, I feel a great
sense of love and security and meaning and so do my children. However, I’m
still haunted by my former life. I have regular “what if” dreams. I mourn the
loss of tragic love, of drunken debauchery, of carelessness and care-freeness. I
feel out of place in the sanity of my life. But I go on. I don’t fuck it up. I
constantly choose to not regress. Does that mean I’m still in a stage of
cognitive dissonance? And if so, when will I finally, truly identify with
goodness and sanity? How many more books, and yoga sessions, and coffee talks,
and philosophy classes, and acts of love, and self-discipline, and olive
branches will it take for the cycle to complete itself?
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