Everywhere or Nowhere #045
On having the courage and clarity to seize your life back, for good.
Hello my dear friends, how have you been? It has been entirely way too long since I have written here. To be honest, I haven’t quite been able to figure out until today what I wanted to say after being gone for so long. But this morning I knew and felt it was time. I have missed you and I am so grateful you are here. Let’s go…
Currently listening to…
I have never loved or looked forward to New Year’s. I know I am not the only one who feels this way and don’t worry, this is not a belated post on goals or ambitions for the new year. As Larry David always said, any talk of New Year’s past January 3rd is just, well, unacceptable.
I only bring it up because I have always felt there was too much pressure on a calendar year ending and a new one beginning, to change your life in an instant. Same can be true with the chapters of your life and big life-altering decisions. In the movies, the protagonist seems to always feel instant gratification, heartbreak, change, regret… something, immediately after. There is this real release of tension, no matter the outcome. But in my experience, it’s going to look a lot like stumbling around in the dark for a long time first.
Now, I wouldn’t say every day of the last five years was exactly me stumbling around, but so much of the clarity I feel in this very moment, was only possible because of all my desperate attempts to get to a point where I could say out loud, I’M HEALED! So many sleepless nights I begged the universe for me to wake up the next day cured from regret, shame, loneliness, confusion and self-doubt for everything I left behind in the old version of my life and in some cases, knowingly let fall apart in front of my eyes. I have declared on this very Substack no less than 3 times that I felt like my healing journey was over and I was leaving it behind. I am here to tell you that in those moments, I wasn’t lying, I truly felt like I was there. And maybe I almost was so many times. I don’t discount any of the hours, days and months I poured into trying to start over, but I hadn’t yet found what I needed most: the courage to seize my life back.
I deactivated my Instagram account in January. What a strange feeling for someone who used to post almost daily. But even more bizarre is how little I have thought of it since. A couple times the first week and then, nothing, unless I get a text from someone who I don’t speak with regularly on text/calls asking if I am alive, ha, which is entirely valid. It wasn’t some dramatic thing. I just quietly woke up one morning and decided that part of taking back real, lasting control of my life also meant my privacy and exposure. I will be back some day, I’m not sure when, but I will never go back to how it used to be. Now if that’s not a metaphor for my life, I don’t know what is…
Leaving Instagram was just one small active change I could make to disrupt patterns that were consistently holding me back. I am not sure if any of you are like me, but I am someone who can have all the ability and desire to make a change and then end up talking myself out of it and worst of all, justifying it. And like so many thought-leaders tell you, every time you go back on a promise you made to yourself, you are teaching your nervous system and your brain, that it’s ok to not believe in yourself. For a long time, even last year, I was taking one small step forward and then two leaps backwards. Because not only did I not believe in myself enough, I had taught myself that the safest place for me was living somewhere in between what was “supposed to be” and where I was meant to go next. And the pain that comes with living your life like that for so long, can take you to places you weren’t sure you could ever come back from.
When I talk about seizing your life back, I am talking about the ability to see clearly in front and behind you… all the mistakes you made, the necessary hurt you endured, the people you let down, acknowledging all the different versions of yourself, the decisions you made in fight or flight mode, the things you said that you didn’t mean, the list could go on. When you let all the should have beens control so much of your energy, you will never truly be able to move forward. I can accept that all of these things happened but most importantly, I have forgiven myself for them. And if you are looking for a sign to forgive yourself too, this is it.
Last May when I moved upstate and out of NYC, I thought that I would feel changed overnight. That the moving boxes would get unpacked and my new life would begin. I thought that after I asked for a divorce. I thought that after I got back from in-patient treatment. I thought that after I quit my career in publishing. I thought that after countless friendships and relationships fell apart. Each met with an anti-climatic moment of panic-induced, what do I do now? Maybe some people in life get the instant movie-moment, but my guess is most of you are like me, and will spend more time than you think in this life, stumbling around in limbo. I’m here to remind you, it will suck, you will hurt, but you will make it. I won’t say, for the 4th time, that I’m healed. I know enough now to know that healing will walk alongside me for the rest of my life. But all of your should have beens, don’t have to. You deserve the courage and clarity to grab onto what comes next.
I am just so glad you are here xx
See you next week,
Amanda