for a couple of days now, i have been thinking about what i’ve been wanting to say to wrap up 2013 and what i want to say about the year we just stepped into. it’s not that i necessarily want to wax poetry about all of the lessons i’ve learned but, i guess a part of me wants to voice it as best as i can. i want to know that i did learn some lessons actually. and i think i did. 2013 seems like it is what it would feel like to take a master’s program. i felt schooled to say the least.
my 2013 started off very different than other years. i was involved in something that completely raptured my whole being and for a time, i almost thought it’d always be like that. but, life as we all know it doesn’t always work out the way you think it’s going to or hope that it will. so, as my year progressed, it did just that. it turned into something i would have never asked for but would have to endure anyway. and maybe that was the point. because if we were to talk about lessons, this was by far the biggest lesson i have ever had to go through in my life.
by the beginning of summer, i pretty much was spun out on stomach-churning, heart-palpitating and sweat-induced heartbreak pain, the mother of all pains (besides stubbing your big toe). and that is where i will start talking about the lessons i’ve learned i suppose. no matter how much i’ve hoped for certain things in my life, i have become accustom to the notion that life never asks you what you want and even when i think it is, it really isn’t. and so this lesson wasn’t any different but it never feels any less painful whether you knew that already or not.
so, i think the lesson in that would be to know that yes, life isn’t going to ask you what you want so you’re going to have to do that for yourself. what do you want? you know, to be honest with yourself is one scary place to be. it’s sort of like being in the middle of a dark room and you’ve got to navigate yourself towards the light, the one that you hope is there in the first place. and i don’t know about you but, i’m not the biggest fan of the dark and that is what it was like, this lesson. being in the pitch black dark. and wondering, is there light, wherever i am?
we will come back to that in just a little bit because i don’t want to minimize other, possibly lighter yet most-noteworthy lessons i also learned. i learned that sometimes when you reach out and you stretch out your hand just long enough, someone will take it into theirs. i cannot begin to describe the depth of love and support i received this year from family, old and new friends alike. i can honestly say that my heart was full to the brim with the kind of tenderness i was able to receive from those that i loved, and those that i have grown to love so very much. these people, these oh so wise people who lent me their hearts when i felt mine was irrevocably broken and without these people, i don’t think i’d be able to sit here and write about this or make it through the pain that i was in.
you know it’s people like the ones that i am so fortunate to have in my life that are the things that make learning lessons like this the only thing possible to get through it and learn from it because these people are really the ones that have created a whole new dialogue and view to see things from. it makes me think back to this summer when i was getting my first tattoo and my tattoo artist who i still keep in touch with said this to me, he said that all life is about making connections and putting people in our hearts and that we shouldn’t waste one second on those who can only go surface deep. i think about that all the time, it was probably one of the most profound things i’ve ever heard. and i will always be grateful to those words.
and the connections i’ve made this year with new friends and the connections that have deepened with friends that i have had for years has been…well…it’s been everything to me. because i believe too that life is all about connections, reaching out and touching one another and being touched in return and this year proved that to me ten-fold.
so back to the biggest lesson i’ve learned that spurned from my heartbreak, you know the thing i’ve droned on about in probably all of my blogs. how did i learn from it? what else did i learn from it? what is it that i really do want? and my answer to all of those are well, just this…to be determined. if i were to sit here and tell you that i’ve learned my lesson, i will give my heart out to less people, i won’t give as much as myself to someone else, i won’t be with people less-worthy, or whatever, i’d probably be lying because those are things you cannot ever predict. yeah you get smarter about choices, and about the people you let into your life but you cannot predict just how you’re going to behave or how someone is going to react to who you are. life is still a gamble, no matter the lesson.
but, what i can tell you is that the growth i have taken this year is something that is a progression. it hasn’t stopped. i haven’t learned all that i can. God, do we ever? someone once told me that the minute you stop growing is when you’re dead. i still believe that. sure, i have days when i just feel like i want to be done already, i want to know exactly what i’m doing with my life, who i am, and where i’m going but, i know that’s ego and not truth. because the truth is that i may never know those things to an exact tee, and they may always change but, that’s the point. the only constant we will ever have is change.
you know i said before that being honest with yourself is a scary place to be and it is. and i find myself the most scared when i sit down and tell myself that this is what i want because sometimes i think, i may never get it. i may never have the courage to go out there and get it or have the courage to wait for it because i can be a taurus to a tee at times, one stubborn ass bull. i want things and i want them right now. but, remember, here comes that pesky notion again…life never asks you what you want. and what about this fear thing? is that ever going to go away, even with my progression into a new me? i don’t know.
the other day i was on facebook and i read a quote that said everything you want is on the other side of fear. pretty powerful, huh? i thought so at least. and it made me think of this year and just how much my choices have been fear-based for a very long time. i’m so fearful that i won’t ever get what i want, and that if i ever do, it won’t be real. or that i don’t really know what i want or that i’m afraid to be that honest with myself about what i do want. i did mention i have this thing about fear, right?
but, then i think about some of the things i did this year and i think that some were made possible by the fact that yes, i was scared out of my gall but, i did it anyway. that i pushed through certain boundaries that were only put up by myself and my fear and again, i did it anyway.
so, to really try to sum up my year as poetically as i can and with all the meaning of who i am and who i want to be, what i learned the most this year was that there are some connections you make in life that run so deep, they’ll change every core of who you are or thought you were, and that if you don’t ask yourself what you truly want, no one will, and that fear is a state of mind, a motivator, and the one thing that can stop you dead in your tracks or make you look at yourself in the most brutally honest way, the only way to look at yourself.
2013, you really kicked my ass. you beat me to a bloody pulp, had me crying like a newborn baby in the fetal position, and really pushed me off a cliff with no remorse whatsoever. yet, just like any other bully who comes to take my lunch money, you leave me with something i didn’t have when you took my money the first time and that’s conviction that the next time, i will be better prepared. i may not always get it, you may always take a little something from me, but each time, i’m going to be there, a little smarter, faster, and hopefully, better.
2014…here we go.
lostinmytwentys 