It's the end of my last weekend in Chicago for a while, and since I don't know if I'll live here again and I've been saying some goodbyes, I am feeling wistful. This place has been my home for 7 years, and maybe it will be again, but I know that even if I come back, this is a new phase of life for me. I think life is set up to be full of beginnings and endings, it's perpetual motion, with so many things coinciding and overlapping. It's really exciting, but it's hard to adapt and evolve at the pace that decisions are made and circumstances change. Even when I'm the one making the decisions and changing the circumstances, which is what I'm in the process of doing now. It's amazing, these feelings both that I'm the least certain of the outcome of what comes next, and simultaneously the most sure of myself that I have ever been. I feel empowered even while I feel as though I'm not really in control.
I've been thinking a little about my orientation toward life, how I have this persistent sense that there's more to learn and do, and it motivates me to keep going. Back when I had first started making some of the big decisions I'm now carrying through, someone asked me, "Is there a chance that this won't work out?" And it's always felt like a very silly question to me, because the answer is, "Of course!" I think it's really the only honest answer to that question, in any context. To only pursue "sure bets" means we miss both that nothing is truly a sure bet and that so many of the most important and rewarding things to pursue involve risk and investment of ourselves. What I'm doing now feels like going "all in", a strategy I was never taught and have in fact been discouraged from. But my "sure bets", my very rational and responsible-seeming choices up to now, have gone bust when it comes to bringing me happiness. And I'm actually excited to be going a different route now, one in which my heart and intuition have more influence. It feels very romantic and much more genuine.
And speaking of being genuine, to start a new tangent, I have also been feeling like I have put myself through too much emotional hell just for wanting to really be and express myself. It turned out that what I wanted was not to be in my marriage, which I began realizing more than a year and a half ago. And that really jolting realization was then scrutinized, first by myself, but also by others, including my now ex-husband. It became a debate of what was true, but the truth that was my emotional reality and not somebody else's, so I find myself getting this surprising new feeling of indignation about how I treated myself and how I was treated by others in the course of trying to navigate how I was feeling (though some very graceful people in my life were much more generous with me). It was a terrible process for me, but the burden of blame was readily given to me (largely by me) and I accepted it, so it was difficult even to acknowledge my own needs at the time. It's hard not to break my principle of "no regrets" when it comes to the way things went last year, because I really would do some things differently if I knew then what I know now. But I know life is what it is and there will always be imperfection, some gap between the way things are and the way we would have liked, because we can't understand and anticipate everything we will encounter.
But we can learn, and that is what I find exhilarating and rewarding about life. I feel anxious about what comes next, but I feel better about it because I am facing it with someone who doesn't balk at uncertainty. I don't want to gush, but I'm feeling grateful for all of the really unmatched strengths of this guy right now.
And I guess that's as good a place as any to call it a night.
I've been thinking a little about my orientation toward life, how I have this persistent sense that there's more to learn and do, and it motivates me to keep going. Back when I had first started making some of the big decisions I'm now carrying through, someone asked me, "Is there a chance that this won't work out?" And it's always felt like a very silly question to me, because the answer is, "Of course!" I think it's really the only honest answer to that question, in any context. To only pursue "sure bets" means we miss both that nothing is truly a sure bet and that so many of the most important and rewarding things to pursue involve risk and investment of ourselves. What I'm doing now feels like going "all in", a strategy I was never taught and have in fact been discouraged from. But my "sure bets", my very rational and responsible-seeming choices up to now, have gone bust when it comes to bringing me happiness. And I'm actually excited to be going a different route now, one in which my heart and intuition have more influence. It feels very romantic and much more genuine.
And speaking of being genuine, to start a new tangent, I have also been feeling like I have put myself through too much emotional hell just for wanting to really be and express myself. It turned out that what I wanted was not to be in my marriage, which I began realizing more than a year and a half ago. And that really jolting realization was then scrutinized, first by myself, but also by others, including my now ex-husband. It became a debate of what was true, but the truth that was my emotional reality and not somebody else's, so I find myself getting this surprising new feeling of indignation about how I treated myself and how I was treated by others in the course of trying to navigate how I was feeling (though some very graceful people in my life were much more generous with me). It was a terrible process for me, but the burden of blame was readily given to me (largely by me) and I accepted it, so it was difficult even to acknowledge my own needs at the time. It's hard not to break my principle of "no regrets" when it comes to the way things went last year, because I really would do some things differently if I knew then what I know now. But I know life is what it is and there will always be imperfection, some gap between the way things are and the way we would have liked, because we can't understand and anticipate everything we will encounter.
But we can learn, and that is what I find exhilarating and rewarding about life. I feel anxious about what comes next, but I feel better about it because I am facing it with someone who doesn't balk at uncertainty. I don't want to gush, but I'm feeling grateful for all of the really unmatched strengths of this guy right now.
And I guess that's as good a place as any to call it a night.
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