Sometimes I'm living my life in a rearview mirror. There are so many moments here and now I should be living for. Soaking in. Because they won't last forever. Time with friends and family that passes by like seconds. I spend much more time dissecting my past than I should.
It's such a contrast to who I was in my 20's when I did nothing but look beyond the present, always yearning for something different than where I was. When I was single, I wanted a relationship. When I was in a relationship, I wanted to be single. I wanted a journalism career only to find it wasn't what I dreamed of. I drifted in a bubble of "what could be" instead of cherishing "what is."
I'm about to turn 30 in a couple months, and it's such a shock. I was a suicidal teenager. In and out of relationships, I crashed and burned. When my marriage fell apart, I left and only wanted to end my life. It destroyed me. Yet here I am, at 29-years old. Single. Childfree. I have this life I can live for myself yet I dwell in the past. My main character, Lindsay got some advice from her dad I really need to follow. "It's okay to crash and burn, but don't unpack and live there."
Since being single and on my own again, I fret constantly about my future and where I'm going and what I need to do. I didn't ever think I'd live to 30. Yet I have, so what do I do? I never made solid plans beyond whims and dreams. Some would call it a gift to still be here. I consider it simply the way things turned out.
I know I'm not the only one at this bizarre point. Clambering around, trying to figure how to human. How to adult. How to exist. Catch up. When everyone else is getting married, having kids, careers and social lives, and I feel like I'm left behind on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a beat-up suitcase and some fractured dreams. Some wildflowers to keep me company in some solace I've never noticed. A restless heart that doesn't want to stay in one place but has nowhere to go.
....but maybe that's what I need right now. To linger in that roadside meadow of wildflowers before moving on. I am in this place. The suitcase is beat up but it holds what I love. It takes care of me. Vehicles speed by in chaos of jobs, kids, spouses and expectations. They rush so much they don't see the watercolour sunset from this spot. I lived fast in my 20's. Destructive relationships. Excessive drinking. Partying to kill pain. Therapy. Backstabbers.
What I need to do is slow down. Bathe in the lilac and tangerine hues of the sunset. I have time to keep going, eventually. But I also have time right now to pause and heal and truly assess myself. To become content with who I am. And honestly, maybe singlehood is my lost highway I haven't discovered. Something I'll actually enjoy more so than being smothered in relationships. Maybe freedom is where my heart is. I already know I don't ever want kids - am I the same way about men?
It's a place worth exploring. Maybe that's where my peace lies. In solitude. In space to think and feel and process. I've even had one of my best friends tell me I seem happier without a man in my life. She's never been wrong before.
So that's it. I'm going to slow down. Take it all in. Live in more moments. Laugh more and feel it in my soul. The crevices where it reaches and gives some light. Just sit in this meadow, sometimes wander and explore, and in the meantime, the world can carry on around me.
The future will still be there when I arrive. I don't want another decade to go by for me to wonder what I did with all that time. I'll keep living. Because sometimes, especially right now, it has to be enough.