By Louise Watson | Tiny Buddha
“You don’t always need a plan. Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, let go, and see what happens.” ~Mandy Hale
Wake up.
Wish I could go back to sleep.
Get up and ready for work. Tell myself that today I’ll leave earlier but then leave the same time as usual.
Walk to work. Pass all the same people I did yesterday. At the same time.
Arrive at work. Listen to the same people complaining about the same things. Complain about the same things myself.
Teach my classes. Tell people off for being late—the same people as yesterday and the day before that.
Go home. Try to work toward my dream life. Collapse from exhaustion after about half an hour and wonder what the point is.
Go to bed. Cry lots. Hope that I don’t wake up in the morning.
Wake up again and repeat.
This was my routine for a good number of months before I finally couldn’t take it anymore.
Did I have the world’s worst job? No, not really. Did I live in a hell hole? Not at all. In fact, you could probably say that I didn’t have any problems, yet I was possibly more miserable than I’d ever been.
I couldn’t believe it. How had I ended up like this? I’d tried so hard to change my life. I’d meditated, done yoga, followed my dreams, made a vision board, and bought lots of self-help books. I’d even read them, too!
What more was a girl supposed to do? Why wasn’t my life-changing?
I desperately wanted to leave my job, but couldn’t. I wouldn’t have the money to pay the rent. I wanted to leave my apartment but I had nowhere to go. Not unless I went to stay with my mother and, I couldn’t do that—not at my age!
So I plodded on, I tried to be a good ‘spiritual’ person and accept my life as it was. I tried to make the best of things. And sometimes, it worked, but not for long.
Eventually, the feelings of dissatisfaction would return. The feeling of helplessness. Feeling stuck. Wanting to escape.
But there was no way out. I’d be repeating this day forever. And ever.
Let It Go
Around this time, I was reading a lot about how we need to close one door before another can open. I was also seeing colleagues leave work to pursue a life of their dreams.
Rather than giving me hope, this made me feel more downhearted. It was all right for them; they had money, a partner, a new job, or an already-up-and-running business.
I was all alone. I was broke. I had no husband to support me. No rich relatives to bail me out.
Everything I’d done to try to make a living out of work that I loved had already failed. I didn’t even know what I wanted anymore. I just knew I didn’t want what I had.
I’d get irritated when I’d read about how I had to simply quit my job, how I had to follow my heart. What if my heart was only telling me what I didn’t want? What if it was refusing to tell me what was next?
What if I closed one door and the other one got stuck?
What then?
I was so afraid of what would happen, I held on for months, hoping for an answer to drop out of the sky.
Until the pain of staying where I was suddenly became too much to bear. I couldn’t take it anymore. Suddenly, what happened next didn’t matter.
I didn’t care.
I saw the madness of what I was doing: staying in a job I didn’t want to do, to live in an apartment that I didn’t want to live in, to stay in an area that I didn’t particularly like. Just to survive. And even surviving wasn’t much fun.
So I surrendered. I did what I’d felt called to do all along: I said goodbye to the security I’d been clinging to. With no idea of what was coming next. With no income and little money. And no idea where I was going to live.
But as soon as I made my decision, I felt a huge sense of relief. I wondered what had taken me so long.
Of course, it wasn’t long until the fear crept back in. I had moments when I wondered what I was doing and how I would survive.
But even in those moments of doubt, there was a knowing that leaving my present situation was the right thing to do.
All my life, I’d put survival first. Now it was time to put me first.
My happiness. My sanity. My peace of mind.
The worst-case scenario may not be so bad. In fact, it might be quite good.
