How to survive the worst time of your life
I pull around the corner, and I see his car parked in front of my parent's house. My heart starts beating faster - did he come to see me? He must have! After not having seen him for 3 long months, giving him the space he requested (despite it nearly killing me), he is finally ready. Ready for a real relationship with me!
I'm so giddy with relief and excitement, I laugh out loud.
I haphazardly park the car, take one last deep breath to calm my wildly beating heart, and enter the house.
They are in the kitchen: Mom, dad, my sister, him. For one last, blessed moment, everything is the way I expect it to be: Dad sitting in his customary chair, glass of wine in front of him, smiling hesitantly. Mom sitting across from him, talking too loudly.
Then my gaze finds him, and my entire body is flooded with happiness. He is here! He came back to me! My eyes find his, but instead of smiling back, his expression is somber. I try to read the emotions in his unsmiling face: Nervousness? Anxiety? Sadness? They are all part of it, but the main one hits me a moment later: It's guilt. And as I slowly look to his left, the source of his guilt becomes evident: It's my sister. Sitting entirely too close to him, and, as I notice with a jolt, holding his hand.
The boy I haven't been able to stop thinking about for months, my sort-of-boyfriend who was supposed to be my real boyfriend just as soon as he was ready, is holding my sister's hand.
This is a little glimpse into the book I'm currently working on.
I'm writing about the darkest time of my life, when the boy I was crazy about not only dumped me and started dating my sister, but my parents knew and approved of it, and didn't tell me.
That was the beginning of the worst 2 years of my life.
I felt betrayed by my family and the boy who was supposed to love me, but I was also stuck in a life I hated: Studying something I knew was completely wrong for me, but not knowing what else to do. Feeling like an outsider amongst my friends.
I never felt so lost or alone. So at a loss for what to do next.
But what I eventually realized, as I was sitting amongst the ruins of my life, was this:
It could only get better.
So I asked myself a few important questions:
1. What do I really want?
I knew what I didn't want: Pretty much everything about my current life. Figuring out how to change it was trickier. What I did was starting to hang out with the 'travellers'. There were several guys in my class who were, to me, hard-core travellers. The kind that packs a backpack, buys a one-one ticket to wherever is cheapest that day, and takes off all summer. My reaction had always been: I could never do that. But after talking with them and seeing the light in their eyes when they told me about their adventures, I started to think: Why not? Why not me?
2. How do I make it happen?
Once I made the decision to go away, I didn't have to think twice about where I wanted to go: Canada.
Canada was my number one travel goal. From the time I was a little girl, I had wanted to go there. In my mind, Canada was equivalent to freedom, and freedom was what I craved.
However, I knew that I would never be brave enough to go off completely by myself.
While I was still trying to figure out how to get there, the universe showed me a way.
Because that's the funny thing about the universe: Once you put your intentions out there, it responds. Sounds kooky, I know - but I have experienced it so many times in my life, that I truly believe that.
3. Where do I find the courage to actually do it?
That was my biggest problem. Still is, with many things in life. I'm not a courageous person.
But what I have learnt is to only worry about the next step. If you try to figure it all out at the beginning, you will get discouraged, 100%. I like to think of every project, every goal in my life as a marathon. You wouldn't be able to run a marathon on the first day (and if you are, RESPECT), would you? You divide it into small, manageable(ish) chunks.
Worry about what you have to do today, and nothing else.
Because even if you're the world's greatest planner, things always change.
Oh yeah, and there is this:
(This is the truest quote I have ever read.)
Here is the thing: We all get knocked down a few times in our lifetime. We will have to suffer through break-ups, losses, heartbreak, and pain. None of us gets spared, unfortunately.
But we can learn from it. We can choose to find the lesson in whatever shitty thing is happening to us, and move on.
We have a choice in how we deal with whatever life throws at us: Love or Fear; Acceptance or Regret; Drift or Desire; Optimism or Pessimism.
The story of my book starts out at a low point, but it gets better. A lot better. Not in the ways I expected it to; but in ways I could never have predicted.
It's a story of hope, of love, and of how, when you start believing that great things may happen, they will happen to you.
I hope that wherever you are in life right now, you will remember this: It gets better.
You have a choice.
And if you choose happiness, happiness will choose you right back.
xo Miriam
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Vol. 3