One life

Who says there’s just one way to live? Earn a living, raise a family and live happily ever after, right? But what if you face a break-up, you’re in a dead-end job and you lose the roof over your head? What’s left? Or will you finally have the time and space to find out who you truly are? 

If you would’ve asked me twelve years ago who I was, I would have answered: I’m 29 and I work for a large corporate. I live in Amsterdam with my boyfriend. In my free time I love sports and socializing with my friends. Oh, and I have been to fifty countries.  

But I learned I’m not my job, nor my relationship. Losing everything was a hard, but effective way to let go of who I was and become who I might be.  

Recently I went on a retreat at the Recovery College and some of the younger girls there reminded me of myself a decade ago. Not ready to give up the job I had worked so hard for all my life. Or not able to get over a relationship I grew up in. After eight years in a relationship, I didn’t know who I was anymore. Our lives were so intertwined. And after eight years at a large corporate I found it so hard to let go, I walked into my senior director’s office crying, saying I just didn’t want to do the job anymore. And she said: “It’s just a job”. But even though she was right, it didn’t feel like just a job at the time, it was my life. At least I thought it was. 

After this tremendous loss, I mourned and grieved and misbehaved, to a point where the whole wall came falling down. But maybe it was necessary to face some truths about myself: 

I now realize that all my (adult) life, I have been running. I thought I was running towards something; my dreams, a country, a company. But I have been running away; away from relationships and away from places that reminded me of those relationships. It’s time to stop running. It’s time to slow down and grow some roots. Running away from something is exhausting, especially when you have been doing it for over twenty years. And I am tired now. Every time something didn’t work out (the relationship, the job, or just life in general), I would leave and start over somewhere else.  

But: “You can go the whole world over, every city has its dawn, but everybody living has one place where he was born”.  

This is my life. Not tomorrow, not in five or ten years from now, all I have is today. And today was a fine Saturday.