There are moments in life you will never forget. My high school choreographer used to tell us to stop every once in a while and take "snapshots" of our lives-- the moment before you step on stage, the moment after you graduate, the moment before a first date. She told us that our lives would fly by, that all we would have were moments to look back on and we needed to take the time to really remember what that moment was like. That was 7 years ago. I still remember her standing in greenroom before a show telling us to remember the moments in life worth remembering.
Tonight I took a snapshot. It wasn't anything special to an outsider. I got done working a 12 hour day as a waitress-- working a job to pay the bills while I tried to land the job of my dreams. I got some food with a friend, came home with a bit of a buzz and a dire need to pass tf out before I had to wake up for work to do another 12 hour day all over again.
I walked into my apartment to see everything changed--to see the place I had called my home look nothing like the place I had left 12 hours earlier.
And that's when I took my snapshot.
The weight of my decision to move to New York City had truly settled in. I was leaving the town I had called my home for 5 years to live in a city I had only dreamed of living in.
"Growth is uncomfortable. Growth is uncomfortable. Growth. Is. Uncomfortable."
That was my mantra as I walked the hall of a place that felt like nothing familiar. That was the mantra of me beginning the life I was not prepared to begin.
But growth is uncomfortable and the only way to get through the uncomfortableness of life is to live.
At that moment, I took a snapshot of the life I was leaving behind. Maybe not today, but in a few months time that life will be over for me. I will no longer be the Pitt grad living in Oakland working as a waitress and waiting for life to happen.
I am going to be the badass New Yorker who still doesn't have her shit together but is doing everything she can to get wherever she needs to be in life. I won't take no for an answer --- especially if that no is coming from myself. I will take this horrible stress and anxiety-- the uncomfortableness of what life is like right now--- and use it to get me where I need to be.
'This life isn't what you had planned??' Make a new plan.
'Moving to NYC is terrifying as hell and part of you thinks you may end up murdered in a ditch within 4 months time?' Move anyway and hope to God people love you enough to send peonies to your funeral.
I have had the most support and help in my life when other people have shared their real life experiences with me and that is what I'm trying to do today. We are all humans and we are all trying to find our place in the world-- whatever that may mean to each of us.
It's okay not to have everything together.
It's okay to be terrified.
It's only natural to wonder if there is a reason.
Or wonder if any of this is worth it.
Take your snapshot of that moment-- that moment when you are so terrified you feel like you could never fully grip reality again. Take that snapshot to remind yourself to keep going. To remind yourself that you never want to feel that way again and will work your ass off to accept nothing less than what you deserve.
Take that snapshot and then live your messy, beautiful, and unplanned life.
Allow yourself to be where you are in life without ever forgetting where you want to end up.
Take your snapshot.. and then live.
xoxo,
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