I'm still utterly baffled by this last week's encounter. But, what has done is remind me of what I need. Talking with a near stranger holds a mirror up to your beliefs and wants.
I've been very slowly learning that my life is mine. Dad dying has given me some space to start to rebuild and figure out what it is that I, and no one else, want for me.
The tides have been turning for a while now. Like most big things in my life, I'll happen upon a decision almost by accident after digesting for a while or even the smallest of doors opening. Catharsis will come.
A couple of months ago an email from a recruitment consultant in Sydney strengthened an idea in my head – I could leave. I could do, or be, something different.
I have no idea what the future looks like but I do know change is afoot. It's in my gut.
These past years, the only big part of my life I could really (or felt able to) influence was work, and I made it happen. I'm at a point in my career when I've done enough. If I don't climb any further up the ladder, then that's just fine. I've got a good balance of success, satisfaction and experience without pushing it further for now. Often, I just want to stop and do something practical instead.
I can feel my real life shifting, and it's not about loss. I have the opportunity to dare to dream about my future again, rather than fighting very hard to make the present as good as it can be and watching the past dim through sickness. Although letting myself imagine is a little scary – like I'm tempting fate - but it's time I do.
I don't know what's going to give, but I know something will.
I no longer feel duty bound and tied.
I deserve to be happy and to embrace the world in my way. Who knows if I'll stay put in this city and have a change of house or routine or whatever, or whether I'll jump on a plane and have an adventure. For the first time since leaving university I feel like my life is mine and that there's a world of possibility to grab hold of.
I know who I am, what I don't want and, somewhere, somehow, the rest will emerge. I must not, will not, let myself get stuck. I want beauty and risk and happiness and pain and challenge and love and freedom of my own making.
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