In All The World

"In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it -- I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know -- but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me."
- Virgina Satir

Since returning from vacation nearly three weeks ago, my life has been changing, shifting around under my feet, rather dramatically. Decisions have been pondered over, agonized over, some made and others discarded. I have felt lonely, desperate, elated, strong, fearful, and useless. A whole rolling landscape of difficult emotions and even harder choices. I am struggling with resentment; trying to banish it from my mind. I am struggling with confidence; trying to woo it into my life. Most of all, I am wrestling with purpose; this idea that I should have one and should probably be a little closer to realizing what it is by now. But like the above quotation, I am really just trying to be friendly and loving to myself, all parts of me, so that I can courageously and hopefully start the next chapter of my life.

The truth is that I just don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Yet, when I look around me- at my friends, family, bosses, and students- I feel like I am already surrounded by grown-ups and I am just gate-crashing the party. When I look back on my life so far, I am starting to suspect that I made some ghastly errors when I took certain paths. Instead of leading me down the "wrong path", these errors have simply lead me to a dead-end road in the middle of nowhere. I wonder now, if I should have fought the pressure and chosen to eschew university right after high school. I had no clue what I wanted then, and I wonder if being forced to choose before I was ready has resulted in me having no clue today. I chose a major because my mother told me simply "just choose something and follow through". I chose my thesis topic by spinning a globe and picking a place in the world. I am still shiftless, uncertain, lacking ambition, drive and that always illusive sense of purpose. So what's next?

Love. Someone recently told me that I am living my dream. But the truth is I am just chasing a dream. Chasing a dream of falling in love, moving to a far-away place and living free. A dream of finding purpose through experimentation instead of school, a dream of "falling into" my perfect career by sheer chance. A dream of taking crazy risks that magically, mysteriously, turn into the best decisions of my life. I've been chasing one dream the longest: the dream of finding somewhere in the world that will fall in love with me, before I ever have to figure out how to love myself. This is the dream that underlies most of my choices in life. This is my one long-standing fantasy. I want to find a place in the world- some far-flung community- where I am loved, accepted, honored, included, without ever owning my faults and weaknesses, my failures and insecurities. And for a very long time, I have been chasing that dream: moving from place place (once a year!) searching endlessly for a ready-made haven from myself. Love. How do I fall in love with myself?

Although I don't yet know when we are leaving Argentina, it is clear that we have crested our climax point, and are now moving steadily downhill toward a homeward journey. As I come to terms with this fact, I often feel incredibly disappointed. This has not been the experience I was hoping for, namely: the culmination of that one constant fantasy. I have not found my haven here; not in my relationship with my partner, not in my relationship with this place in the world. I still have a lot of searching ahead of me, a lot of uncertainty and perhaps more crazy risks. But now that my wheels are coasting downhill, I have started to dedicate much of my time to the question of: What's next? Is there still room for love, acceptance, and understanding in my relationship with Pat? Is there still a chance that two lost souls searching separately for their purpose in life can be successful together? Is there still room to explore my purpose in this career I have pursued to Argentina? Is teaching a viable and valuable way for me live while learning to love myself? If so, to what distant corner of the planet shall I fling myself next?

If the answer to these questions is no, then what? It is terrifying to think of starting again from that all-too-familiar place where I am single, broke, with no where to live, no useful job, no one to put my trust in. Where I have to start loving the most miserable version of myself. I always seem to take the hardest road in life. Yet if that is the place from which I must begin again, I want to do it this time with a better attitude and less guilt. I want to be friendly and loving to myself first, so that I can seek out the answers to my personal puzzles with courage and hope. So that I can build myself into that long-sought-after haven and take it with me when I explore the distant corners of this world.