The Path Less Travelled By

Four years ago I would have fantasized about the last weeks of my undergraduate degree in psychology and literally cried from excitement about my future and my passion for the entire field. Even six months ago I would have. I honestly felt like psychology was the apple that fell right onto my head and allowed me to finally discover the gravity that was my life. And, if I had to explain the moment when I knew that psychology was for me, I would tell you that it was in grade eleven when I was sure that I had met the love of my life. Truthfully, he might have been one of them, but now I know that he wasn't the only one. In fact, he's the reason I don't believe in one soul mate. I believe there's a few and you have to figure out what kind of love you want in your life. I am getting on a little tangent here, but in grade eleven, I met this person that I swore to myself would be in my life forever. He was the badass dark and handsome type and I found him particularly endearing for reasons I still don't understand. I felt myself, on more than one occasion, just getting lost in the idea of him. The further I dug into who he was, the more in love I fell. It's the only time in my life I ever felt that way for anyone. I think the reason for that is that I always saw so much more inside him than he let on. He was a closed book but for some reason I thought I could break through that barrier with him. Eventually I did, I think. But the barriers are insignificant when two people are part of a puzzle and the pieces don't fit. He was my rock for a long time. I got so wrapped up in who he was to me and what he signified in my life. He was the second "love" that I had I guess, but he was the first one that made me understand what it felt like to need someone more than I needed anything else. He was that "run through your veins and keep your heart going" part of me. He was a huge piece of the person I was for a long time and he was the first story in my life that didn't have a happy ending. And, let me tell you that the story is long and sad.
But, the reason its relevant is because he had mental health issues that he covered up with drugs and risky behavior-so much so that he was taken from my life in a matter of days when I was not prepared. He didn't die, but it felt like he did. And though that was hard enough on its own, what made it worse was that I was constantly was doing what I could to help him. I wanted to fix him and when he wasn't there, I wanted to fix everyone else. I saw him as a bird with broken wings and the person that I am has always admired people like that because it made the moment that they started to fly so unbelievably special.  I know now that it isn't my responsibility to fix everyone I meet, and it isn't my right to decide who needs to be fixed or how they should go about doing it. Surely I know now that I didn't know anything back then-not about how to help him with the pain he had gone through and certainly not anything about life. I was a naïve girl with a huge heart that just wanted to help every person see the light that they can give this world, even when they were lost and drowning in darkness.
I began my undergrad degree right after high school and right after I began that journey, he surfaced in my life again. It felt like a fairy tale and didn't take much to rekindle whatever relationship we had left. It continued into the last semester of my first year when it finally came to an abrupt halt. The seemingly attainable happy ending had been slowly deteriorating. Eventually, I began  viewing him as a problem and as someone that would constantly drag me down and hurt me- someone that couldn't love me because he couldn't even love himself. I viewed him as a lot of things and I viewed our relationship as toxic and overall really unhealthy. So, on valentines day of 2013, it ended for good.
​I will never forget that day because I sat in my living room for hours stuck in a dissociative state. I just sat there in my chair in front of the big window that looks onto the front of the acreage. I sat there for hours. I didn't talk. I just stared at the television even though it wasn't even turned on. I sat as beams of light shone onto my heavy beating head and my even heavier heart. I didn't feel warm. I didn't feel anything. And still to this day, I don't know how I got the courage to end that relationship. On that day, I just knew that I had to. I had to because the pain that we constantly caused for each other was becoming unbearable. The sense of dependency I had for him was so strong that after he was gone I didn't know how to stand on my own two feet. It was like I had to relearn to walk after years of being carried by someone I always thought was stronger than me- someone I valued more than I valued myself.
​After that relationship, it was like all I was meant to do was help people. The fact I was able to break through his walls made me feel like I could do that with anyone. I had this intense need to carry people through life just as I had felt like I was carried for those years. My surroundings and information that I was continually given just validated that he was the monster and that he was all of these terrible things and that the problems lied with him. Yet, it was the very information that couldn't explain to me why I was still angry at the world and the situation I was placed in. It wasn't until last week when I hit another rock bottom and started writing in my journal that I began to understand why I was still vexed by this chapter of my life. I wrote that I had gotten so good at writing what I think I need to hear rather than writing what I needed to say. So that very day I wrote for hours and I cried. I forced myself to write everything down. and to feel numb all over again. I wrote about regrets and how I always told myself that regrets aren't a part of my life because everything i've been through made me who I am. Then I wrote about how maybe regrets are the things that don't line up with who we want to be or who we are now. Like they are the actions in our own past that make who we were feel like strangers to the people we are now. That made a lot of sense to me. So, naturally I wrote down all of the regrets I could think of. There was an entire page filled and when I started the flow of honesty, it hurt. In fact, I haven't hurt that much in a long time. It was the most painful experience of my life, but it was also the most  necessary. I wrote that I regretted allowing people into my life repeatedly after they had let me down. I wrote that I regretted being vindictive to the one person I ever loved. I regretted allowing myself to be carried through years of my life. I regretted believing that I was so high and mighty that I could fix people-that I could fix him. I regretted every day I didn't tell the people in my life that I loved them. I regretted all of the times that I didn't stick up for myself-the days I didn't stick up for the person that needed to be fought for. I regretted all of the things that I let pass me by because I was too scared to fail. I regretted all of the things in my life that I avoided because I was too scared to fall. I regretted all of the days I tried to control him because I was so terrified of losing him. I regretted all of the moments that I swore I couldn't survive without him by my side. I regretted the times that I didn't believe in myself-all the days I was scared to let go of the branches holding me up, even though I was ready to fly.
​After I wrote that entry, I read it again out loud and I couldn't even fathom how good it felt to let that weight lift off of me. Sometimes the past doesn't make us look good. Sometimes we look like the asshole- and maybe it is because we were. Maybe it because in that moment in time, we acted out of fear or anger or even out of love. But if you have moments like that and memories that haunt you because of the regrets you carry, then its only because you are human. I kept thinking people weren't allowed to have regrets because they have this negative connotation. But they don't unless that's how you address them. I don't address mine like that anymore. I don't because they turned out to be all of the stepping stones that sat waiting for me in my pond of life. The stones that waited patiently for me and believed that one day when I was finally ready to cross it, I would, and in doing so I would move onto the next chapter of my life.
​The last few days, I've been even more lost than I was before being rejected from all of my masters programs. So here I was today looking into various music schools, thinking about how it feels to be honest with myself about what I want and where I want to go. And, as I'm complaining to one of the best people I have ever known that just miraculously landed in my life this past year, I tell them that I'm confused. Naturally they try and ask me why I feel like that and I reply stating that for my entire undergrad degree I have felt an immense passion for what I was doing because my ex set a fire in me that I couldn't put out. That little chip on my shoulder and inner narcissist wanted to fix the world one piece at a time. But, that as much as I love psychology, that I might need something a little different-something that feeds my soul in a different way. I said that since I started playing guitar and singing again, I felt like I rediscovered this piece of me that I, long ago, forgot I had. It was like I was punishing myself for all of the regrets I had with him and the people I felt like I let down in my life. I wanted to take all these new people and fix them to I could feed my own emptiness that I've been carrying since he left my life. And, while I still believe in everything I have learned in the last four years, and I still believe that education saved my life-maybe even saved me from myself, that furthering in this field might not be what my heart needs. I've always loved music and I have always loved writing and there is so many things I haven't even experienced yet. I know that if I were to really sit down and take my own advice, the advice I preach to everyone around me, it would be to pay attention to the signs of the universe. I have ignored them for the last year. I kept telling myself that this was the life for me and that the obstacles will make the pay off better-which it really does for a lot of cases. But now that I've been unsuccessful in getting into my masters, and I've taken up music again, I feel that it might be time to reconsider the path that I have been walking on since I was 17. I mean, who is to know at this point anyways? All I know is that I have to stop punishing myself for who I used to be and everything I should have or could have done. I need to accept that where I was isn't where I am. I have to accept that perhaps this part of my life is finally over and that maybe I can finally move on-finally forgive myself for being scared to let go of the branches holding me up-time for me to let go-time for me to learn to fly.
​I think its time to cross the stepping stones in the pond. I think it's time to get to the other side of the rest of my life.

​

---