uncertainty

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As humans, we clamour for certainty. We want to know that there are things we can count on. Stability. Security. We look for it in relationships, jobs, people. We want to know that what is here today will be here tomorrow. That some things will never change.

When I got married, I was very young. I thought that my marriage would last forever. When I worried that we would not last, that things would end, that I would ruin everything, my husband would always say that ending our marriage was not an option to him. That our marriage was the one thing that was constant. That I need not ever worry about that changing.

There was a great comfort in that. I depended on him and on our relationship. I thought we would be together till the day I died. And there was a real beauty in that.

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I know that if it were up to my husband, we would still be together today. We would have lasted forever.

But we didn’t, and it wasn’t.

You see, the truth is, there is very little we can bank on.

We don’t know where the road ahead leads. What is here today may be gone tomorrow. What feels like forever now may change. We may change. Things around us may change. If we are to be true to ourselves, we must accept the reality of uncertainty.

It was my fault that my marriage ended. It was my choice to leave and not to go back. I know the magnitude of what I did, what it meant and stood for. I broke up my marriage and I admit it.

I could have gone back, tried to go back to the way things used to be, forget everything that had happened and everything that had changed inside and out. We would have stayed together then. My husband wanted to forgive, work hard, move on.

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t ignore the truth and the reality of the change that had happened inside me. I couldn’t trade all that in for the security and simplicity of knowing that you have a marriage that will last till death.

As humans, we hanker for certainty, stability and security. But I couldn’t make that decision again. I couldn’t choose the comforts of predictability over truth, passion, life and love.

(c) pixshark.com

I know that not many people will understand this decision. It seems foolish, short-sighted, morally wrong.

Every day now I live with uncertainty. Some days it is harder than others. It can be difficult, not knowing what you can trust in. Some days I feel anxious that I will lose everything. Other days, I can look into life and see it for how it is.

All that we have is this moment. And all that we have is one life. We may not know what is ahead of us, or what will last. But everything that we have is an invitation to experience and enjoy the present in all its fullness.

Uncertainty means that you can take nothing for granted. It means that every second counts and everything in life is a treasure.

It may be terrifying and difficult.

But it makes life worth living.

 

‘go confidently in the direction of your dreams’

(c) flickr.com

For a long time, I looked out into the future and all I saw was grey. An endless nothingness, bleak and dark. I looked into my life and I thought, ‘This is it.’

I didn’t understand it, because on paper I had a great life. It was the middle class dream. I was 26 and married, financially stable, with a house and a dog. No 2.4 children but almost a white picket fence.  I thought it was the depression that made me feel hopeless about my life, longing for death every day. It’s not nice to admit it, but I did. I thought things would never change. That this was all life had to offer.

It wasn’t all bad. There were great things, moments of joy and love. But the truth is that I wanted to die. I didn’t think life was worth living. At any given moment, if you had asked me, I would have told you that I would have preferred death over life.

And that is sad.

I say all this because the truth is, I don’t feel this way anymore.

I want to live. I look out into the future and some days, I am full of anxiety and worry. I worry about finances. I worry about work. I worry about myself. Some days I wonder how I will bear it all, and part of me thinks that it would be easier if my life just stopped.

But for the most part, I want to live. For the most part, if you asked me at any given moment if I would choose life or death, I would choose life.

You see, I feel alive now. I look out into my future and I see possibilities and opportunities. I am 26 and I have at least 50 years ahead of me to try, fail, explore, love, and experience life in all its crazy chaos. I have at least 50 years ahead of me to be broken down and built up again.

This is no small thing for me.

(c) mkalty.com

I have spent most of my life longing for death, dreading the future, and hating myself. And now I feel like my life is starting again. As though everything I had before has been burned to the ground, and I can start from scratch.

This kind of freedom is terrifying and yet so liberating.

I can choose what I want to do now. I can be honest about who I am, without fear of how it affects others, without feeling the need to make myself smaller so others can stand tall. I can be me.

I know what my dreams are now and I am pursuing them. I am studying something that I am passionate about and working towards the life that I want. I am in love.

Most importantly, I am myself. Unreservedly and unapologetically.

And this is what matters most.

the beginning and the end

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At the end of 2014, I left everything I knew to embark on a new life.

I left my old life in a ball of flames, carrying memories and mistakes, questions and doubts. Words fall short in describing what it means to go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning with nothing the same. With everything new.

The sense of looking off a cliff, into the dizzying nothingness of freedom.

I was married, with a house, a job, and a good man as a husband. Over the course of a few months, everything that I took for granted as being my life was turned upside down. The life I had resigned myself to as the bed that I had made for myself, comfortable and empty, changed. I fell in love, and what was my life was no longer my life.

Words fall short to explain what it means to live under a veil of guilt, yet with the knowledge that the life you had was not right. That it was not your life.

I left my husband. With no job prospects and few friends, the start of 2015 marked a new chapter for me, terrifying and sobering. I stand on my own two feet now, looking into the future and looking into the past, looking straight into my heart and into my life.

dances with wolves is my journey to make sense of the past and run in freedom into the future.