From this day forward

So much of life is about two things: thinking about how far you've come and how far you would still like to go.

I can't think of a day that I don't think about the miraculous things I was able to survive thus far in my life. A corrosive ex-fiance, a car crash in the ice that could have been fatal, a cross-country relocation (twice so far), dark days of depression, a ruptured appendix on Christmas day just to name a few. But in ten years from now, what will I say I overcame?

Or maybe I'll ask - how did I get the joy back?

I used to have these moments, moments where I was so happy to be alive, so happy to have survived, so happy to have gotten so far by my own measure. I would be in that moment so completely. I would close my eyes and smile at the landscape of my life and thirst for more, for the joy that future would bring. Slowly in the past couple of years, those days seem to have dried up like a piece a fruit cut open, left susceptible to the elements, decaying slowly. The life of those moments dried up when I was cut open by something along the way.

Ever since getting turned down from grad school again, god took away the dried fruit all together. There is nothing left to wither away now. There is nothingness left. It feels so heavy on my soul. It's ironic how heavy something that is absent can feel.

Maybe it was because I used to travel more. Maybe it was because I never felt a lack of purpose in my life till recently. It's like I was reading the most amazing book and suddenly turned a page to find the next one empty. The text stopped, right in the middle of all the action. I want to keep reading but there is nothing I can see. The pages are blank. I can't see what is supposed to be there.

I feel like lately, god has given me a mission to stop planning, to stop trying so hard to be something and focus on just being. And that doesn't sit well with the restless Aries that I am. Give me a mission, I will tackle it. Unless the mission is to do nothing. I just keep staring at those blank pages in frustrated rage, thinking that if I can just will it to, the story will continue. But it doesn't. I've been doing that for the past week, trying to will the future to come to fruition to me.

The quote "we must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us" keeps playing over and over in my head, like a song on repeat. It's like god is bashing that suddenly blank book on my head saying "do you think getting all huffy will help reveal your path any sooner?"

I have been known to take the long route when trying to get somewhere. I like to bang my head against the door for a while before making a decision. My uncle once said "Well you'll keep banging your head against the door long enough that when it hurts enough, you'll stop." It's maddening I tell you! How can I keep wanting and searching for a plan so badly when it seems to be the one that keeps eluding me lately? How can a smart girl like me do something that crazy when it is so frustrating? Wait....don't answer that. If I knew the answer to that question, I could have saved a lot of doors and not just my own.

Call this my quarter life crisis. It feels like it is. It is as though that book I was reading wasn't just any ole book, it was a map. And there are no directions now. Just whiteness. And I don't expect it to be something someone else could tell me. I know it's something I need to discover. I look back at the cover and remember something important: the road doesn't stop just because you can't see it in front of you. "Margo's survival map of success" is a guide but with no guaranteed routes. It only tells me that first and foremost, I will survive. It can't promise me where I will go, only that I can succeed where ever I choose.

So maybe the blank pages are really just a choice, a success, a joy that has yet to be. The blank pages aren't as antagonistic as I think they are. They are not saying (as I fear they were) "there is nothing from here on out." What I think they are really saying is "----------------->here is your future joy and success, whatever the future brings."

And maybe I have to think that to keep hope. But I'm really ok trying to keep hope alive when there is nothing but blank pages right now. I think the best of success in life is first grounded in a strong cement slab of hope. So I'll keep holding on my suddenly blank book in hopes that the future pages will be filled up soon!