One of the main things I can really account for throughout my whole mini battle/journey to get into this course was the feeling of every time I heard Lissa talk I felt like she was telling my life story. Without the sameness of the exact details but all the basic concepts - the struggles, the fear, the anxiety and worry, the desire for change, the feelings of being stuck, and so on...
One thing I can say right now, just starting the first module (not even the first chapter of it though) is that I'm glad I'm being given this opportunity now. This year I turn 26 and while by now I could have gotten my college degree and started in on or finished a Master's Degree that isn't how things turned out. But really, when I think about all that I have now, all that's happened to me I'm fine with that. Sure I've been married and divorced and had a lot of heartbreaks and hard times, but I have a baby on a way, a partner who loves me to the moon and back and who is single-handedly taking care of me (mother would be so shocked....), a loving dog, and a cute, but cranky lizard. While I don't have many of them I do have some wonderfully supportive friends who have been there in many ways over the years even when I've had to go off and "disappear" and I couldn't ask for more - well I could - but I have a lot even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes...
I just got to the part where it mentions having buried that dreaming part of yourself in your twenties and I have to laugh just because I am twenty something now, but even at this younger age I still went through that issue, just at a much younger age (like about ten or so).
While I can't say that my life hit some of the "extremes" that Lissa's hit, I definitely feel like I had my share of harsh times...having lived my life to do what was expected of me, I went off to college to go into Forensic Science and later added Anthropology to that list, along with a minor in Russian, did so so (I'm not that great an academic even though I'm by no means stupid), trudged along, went through periods of working and going to school, and then just going to school and things just "were". I had a fiance who I'd met before I left for college and lived several states away (he was military and stationed near my "hometown" when we'd met) toy with my emotions, put me through hell, then when I finally got down to Florida to see him he came with his best friend, and the girl he was cheating on me with (which I didn't know about) to pick me up. We spent several night together (it was to be a week total) and then post coitus one night he confessed that he had "gotten drunk at a party and had kissed another girl" two weeks earlier. Obviously I got upset, and yet somehow it was my fault for me to get upset at such an indiscretion which turned out to be sex with her sober 2 nights before I'd arrived....I went through another fiance who later abandoned me out of the blue, then finally found the "nice boy" (although his mother couldn't stand me). Then one fateful night off where I was trying to go to bed early because I had to work the weekend I got the voicemail saying, "You need to come home." from my then step-dad who I couldn't stand and refused to have any sort of polite conversation with. I wondered at the message as it really didn't say anything and I was tired and didn't feel like dealing with him and his nonsense and had no intention of calling him back but received another call and impatiently I asked him why he had the idea that I needed to be back there. "You're mother's dead." The words tumbled out of his mouth like a trainwreck and honestly I don't remember anything really after that. Luckily my fiance of the time was with it enough to drive the five and a half hours to my hometown as all I could muster up was grabbing my cell, cigarettes, charger, and keys. After that weekend everything went to hell. I snatched up some things to remember her by, but that was about it. I vowed never to return there again, not realizing it, and left it all behind. My life seems to have turned to shambles after that, steadily but slowly. I became an exotic dancer (mom would never find out now so I didn't have to deal with her being ashamed or disappointed in me), I attempted to continue school but her third husband literally ruined my ability to get financial aid by refusing to sign the papers without me driving down there to see him (and my intuition screamed at me that that was a bad idea), then I put myself in a ridiculous amount of debt to attend one more year, was going to do so again and then ran into a paperwork glitch and finally said to hell with it and joined the military because I didn't want to be a career stripper or a CNA for the rest of my life and I hoped they could help me get into school...
Five years later I'm still not in school, desperately trying to get discharged from the military, several boyfriends and trysts later, including my most recent ex who put me through entirely too much emotional trauma, pregnant, unhappy, desperately trying to grasp at my dreams and things just look a mess more than ever...and as for my dreams...they're they same as they were when I was but a girl only now I'm trying to pursue them instead of listening to everyone else's negative comments...while battling my own inner negativity. Funny how things seem to come full circle.
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