One minute you have it all figured out. You have spent time carefully planning out your life. You know who you want to be with, you think you have your future career goals figured out, and life, at least for the time being, seems to be agreeing with you.
And then the next minute, life happens. It starts off slowly. Maybe you are no longer speaking to that friend you once thought would be in your life forever. Maybe you and the person you planned to spend forever with only turned out to be for that moment in time. Life has a funny way of redesigning your life without your permission.
It is hard. You go from this calculated plan to barely having the money or the patience to scrape through the day. Things do not make sense anymore either: why did you stay in that relationship? What do I want to do with my life? Who am I really? If you are anything like me, you spend your days going through the motions just so other people know that you are alive. Then at night, when you are all alone, you stay awake wondering where it all went wrong.
Did I say the wrong thing? Did I make the wrong choice? How am I supposed to move on when my feet feel cemented into the ground and my heart feels like it has evaporated out of my body? And frankly, my brain stopped working a long time ago, so I think my thoughts are just playing on a loop at this point.
A very wise man once said, “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the lights.” Starting over is scary. Sometimes, it will not make any sense and you will feel blind in a world full of beautiful color. But starting over is a chance to reinvent yourself. It is a time to figure out what makes you genuinely happy. It is a time to give up on habits that were no longer serving you, because the only thing worse than being blind is having sight with no vision.
Starting over is scary, if you choose to think of it that way. You can choose to think of it as the end of life as you knew it, or the beginning of the new chapter in your story. For the longest time, I thought I had my life figured out, but it turns out people were writing my story for me. I am now in charge of my own destiny. I make my own decisions, I do things based on what would make me the happiest. I need to spend less time worrying about lighting myself on fire for others, and spend more time lighting candles that soothe me.
Every story is different. Every chapter is different. How you choose to view and tell your story is entirely up to you. You can spend your life wishing, hoping, and praying that things could go back to the way they were. Or, you can make a change. You can put yourself out there because life is a constant journey of redefining yourself. When I was younger, I did karate. One of the things we said at the end of every class was a pledge to learn something new every day. It could mean learning how to better yourself. It could mean discovering something you like or dislike. It could mean learning something new about a relationship you care about.
So, take the opportunity to learn, and as cliché as it may sound, enjoy the ride.