Icarus

A few times in the past blogs, I’ve mentioned how it feels as though I’ve been walking through a bad dream. As though any moment, I would wake up and things would be back to normal, my whole world wouldn’t be torn apart.

Funny how in an instant, all of that can change.

I spent nine months in mourning. Nine months of being depressed, trying to hide away, searching for peace, comfort, anything to relieve what felt like perpetual torment (and yes, that is a nod to my inherently dramatic flair). Leading up to my graduation, I had two years of total and complete bliss, well actually, more like three. After I left my ex-husband, I found a new freedom and joy I hadn’t known. I discovered new parts of me and started to enjoy life all over again. Then I fell in love. It was wonderful and everything I had hoped it would be and more. And with a confidence in my step and a young optimistic outlook on life, I headed off to a strange and foreign land with the gleam of knowledge and power in my eye.

I spent two years living off savings, loans, scholarships and my mother, with my only job being homework that never really seemed to be work. I lived in a fabulous city, in a fabulous apartment with a fabulous boyfriend that made me feel all warm and cozy inside. Everything was too good. The world was out there to be gained someday, but for now, I got to languish in the lustfulness of my own existence. I was like Icarus flying too high. And I KNEW it too!!! I knew how blessed I was and still… landing hurt like hell.

I lost the great lifestyle, the boyfriend and the unhinged reality all at once. No wonder I went a little nutty. My ex was the only thing I had left to hold onto, so everything became about him. He was the constant that I thought I could carry with me into the next phase of life.

But alas, everything was changing and I couldn’t stop it. I was leaving college behind and I didn’t want to. Real life was not only looming, it was now here and I wasn’t ready to accept it. Everything crumbled in at once. I was no longer the young, carefree person I had become and loved. There had been no pressures, no roots to grow, no decisions to make. Everything was easy and remedied. And my path had always been different than a normal college go’er. I was older and therefore appreciated it more. I knew what the 9-5 looked like and I DIDN’T want to go back. I loved the feeling of being able to hope for anything, but having an excuse to not have to attain it: school. Now it was put up or shut up… I choice option C: cry.

My own little spoiled girl tantrum. Awesome. So I wrapped my spoiled little girl world around an all-too-fallible boy and brought us both down in flames. Granted the timing in my life of everything falling apart at once wasn’t too keen, but still, whether or not something makes sense does nothing to comfort when the consequences are unavoidable.

Basically, in short, I became one giant ball of emotional intensity, completely unaware of how to get out of the hole I had dug. I had made someone too important, my future too scary, and my past too glorious. That tends to be a perfect mixture for complete and total dysfunction. I wasn’t going to go down without some sort of fight, so I reasoned escaping the pain and the reality was completely and totally justified. This in turn, warped into an over exaggeration, trying to prove to myself, and everyone else I was still going to make something of this hodge-podge life. I was moving back to DC! So, in typical Sara fashion, I MADE that a reality. I didn’t think, I didn’t ponder, I just did. I had to try something, anything to get out of this funk. I had to prove there was hope, life and something more. God wasn’t providing it in the time frame and way I wanted, so I did. I was grasping at straws and straws were what I got.

The moment I stepped off the plane, I started to cry… and I didn’t stop for five days. It was the same feeling I had the morning after my wedding night: Oh shit. I just made a HUGE decision, and I know it wasn’t for the right reasons. I had carried more than my luggage across the country. I had carried my own baggage and funny, the shock of it not dropping off somewhere between SFO and DCA airports. I had said for the week leading up to the move, “I was happy there once…”

I can’t go near Foggy Bottom. I can’t go near Georgetown. Too many memories, it hurts too much to remember how great I once felt and how scared and alone and inadequate I feel now. I was confident, satisfied and at peace when I lived there. Now I feel as though I walk around with some sort of sign that says “I’m a failure, stare at me and mock.” Ironically enough, the demon I was trying to run from was the demon I ran straight towards. As I sat in tears (as usual) on Sunday with a wonderful friend, she looked at me and asked “If you could have what you wanted anywhere in the world, where would it be?” Immediately, “home” flew out of my mouth. She said, then you go home, because starting your life is going to be hard anywhere. That’s something you take with you. It’s not something you get to leave behind. She was right. I wasn’t going to be able to recapture ancient history. It was going to have to be something completely new, and that’s what scared the hell out of me..

My ex once told me I wasn’t good at letting go. He’s right. I remember when I was a child and my parents would put me to bed, I would hear them laughing with their friends, or listen to their TV playing and I would be so upset I couldn’t be a part of it. Those happy amazing moments when the whole family is gathered round and we are having a good time, love and joy and happiness spilling from every face, I would hope and pray no one would have to go to the bathroom or get up for a moment because I knew, I knew if something changed, it would all change, and the moment would end.

For some reason I have spent my whole life fearing a great moment ending as if another one wouldn’t follow. That would be there very last one and if I didn’t capture it and repeat it forever, if something changed, it would all disappear and nothing good would ever happen again.

Telling me that good moments will come again, or that letting a best friend go knowing I will find another, or being okay with one good thing ending because another one would begin somewhere else… it’s like speaking Chinese. It just doesn’t compute. So I wrap myself around people, places and things, hoping they will never change. But then, they do. And then I cry.

I have yet to learn that one good thing ending is just the opportunity for another to begin. Maybe that’s what I have to learn now.

I’m going back to CA. Not because I can’t make it work here, I know I can make it work anywhere. I’m going home because that’s where I feel called and where I know I want to be. It won’t be easy, the economy isn’t great, I’m going to have to work harder than I ever have to accomplish what I want in life, and I’m going to have to learn a whole new way of being. But in the mix-up of my learning, I made some huge errors. I hurt some friends, watched my pride fall to the ground like shattered glass and felt the sting of a friend telling me I was basically a basket case and she had never known me to be happy. Ouch. My drama-queen mentality just came back and bit me in the ass… and to top it off, I would have told you I wasn’t a drama queen. Even worse, I really don’t want to be one. I guess the goal is to not talk about it, but rather “be about it” as I have heard before. Easier said than done though, right? Nothing will sober me faster though, than having to face the mess I made… and having to clean it up.

Nothing is going to be peachy anywhere, but searching for happiness in a geographical location certainly isn’t the answer. And back in CA, things aren’t even close to what I want them to be. My ex and I are in a grey sort of area, knowing we love each other, but we are both a mess and can’t make promises; my parents are about to fall apart; I don’t have a job (but I am applying everyday for about 10 and I know I will have one soon), and I’m not sure I know what I want my life to look like. It’s all very grey and I love black and white and thus, I hate it more than I can say, but I know it’s necessary. At some point the training wheels have to come off, the tears have to stop and I have to put on my big-girl face, and try to grow up a little. And I may be a late bloomer, but I’m getting there.

Nothing has to be decided now. For now, I just need to settle down, find some of that long lost unique Sara-confidence, shake off the doom and gloom, and ask God to help me learn that not every change is bad, every ending awful and there are always great moments ahead. I can be thankful for what He gave me, trusting He will provide again. Joy and peace are not part of the equation of circumstances, but rather, sit above them. They are something that comes from facing demons, making mistakes, and learning the hard way emotions aren’t the truth, no one is responsible for me, but me, and I can’t let anything determine me, besides, well me. As spoiled, irresponsible, irrational, hopeful, heartfelt, authentic, and everything else I may be, at the end of the day, I answer to me. I have to be okay with my decisions, my actions, my choices and I have to own up to them when they fail to be the right ones.

No matter how close I got to the sun, I was always going to fall. Things weren’t always going to be that perfect and life wasn’t always going to be that easy. And as I move along in life, I will gain and lose many things, but if I take with me a self-respect born of ownership and character, if I allow God to humble me, teach me and have immeasurable love and grace for me, if I return that love to Him and others knowing it will never be returned void, then no matter what I do or where I go, I can walk in peace and confidence. It will be less about the circumstances and more about who I am in them, and who I want to be. I haven’t handled everything right, but I am trying. And to me, and I know to the Lord, for now, that’s enough.