Blowing Up Your Life

I dragged myself out of bed and shuffled down the short hallway to my kitchen. 

I snapped the lid off of the Tupperware container and mindlessly poured grounds into a new filter, wiping the sleep from my eyes as I added water.

I leaned heavily on the counter, watching the java perk and drip. And I wondered how many more mornings I was going to stare at the coffee maker thinking that I needed to make a change in my life.

Because the thing was, I needed to do more than make a change. 

I needed to blow up my life and start over again. I mean I needed to chuck an M80 into the thick of it and stop trying to jam the wrong puzzle pieces into the wrong spots. 

You know what I mean. The piece almost fits. It’s close. So if you just hammer your fist down hard enough, you can make it fit.

Except it never really does.

There is always something tugging, pulling, playing at you - at your heart - in your head. There is always something in you that says “no…..this isn’t it. This is okay, but I know there’s more.”

If I’m being honest, that’s what I’d been trying to do for at least a year if not more. Trying to pretend that my life was good enough - trying to jam that puzzle piece into the wrong spot. If you’re not careful though, you end up like the Creedence Clearwater Revival Song - Someday Never Comes.

But the reality was, my situation wasn’t good enough. 

I needed to end a long-time relationship that hadn’t been working for over a year - which in and of itself was daunting. We’d been together over five years, and our lives were intertwined the way that happens with long-term relationships. We shared the house and cars and finances and family. I mean you don’t just break up with the person do you? You break up with the family.

But then it wasn’t just changing the relationship. I didn’t want to live in Western Pennsylvania any more. I didn’t want to keep working for an hourly wage at a camera shop. I had a college degree. I wanted a career. I wanted a Master’s Degree. I wanted more out of my life, and yet everyday, I got up and lived a shell of a life that didn’t feel like it was mine anymore. 

I drank my coffee and thought what will it take? 

While I didn’t come to it in that exact moment, I eventually realized that the answer to that question was brutal honesty.

If I was brutally, painfully honest with myself I didn’t want to salvage the relationship, despite really caring for and loving my partner. I didn’t want to find myself staring at my coffee pot five years from that moment having the same conversation in my head. 

I needed the courage to admit to myself, really, truly admit that my entire life situation at that point in my life (I was 28 years old) wasn’t working for me. It wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t what I needed. 

Once I came to terms and started to really own the fact that I needed to blow things up, my mindset shifted. My thought process was no longer if I made a change but how  and when I was going to make that change happen. 

I know, that sounds so simple doesn’t it? Maybe for some people it is - I don’t know. For me it started with an honest conversation with my therapist  - saying some things out loud. Then it was an honest conversation with my partner. Then it was choosing a new city. I chose between Seattle, Denver and Boston. (I chose Boston, which is how I ended up in Maine). 

That’s when the law of attraction kicked in. I put out my intentions to the universe, and slowly, gradually, I found ways to make the changes I needed to make. It didn’t happen overnight. The process of blowing up my life took months.

Then one day I packed up my parents’ pick up truck like a cliche country song, moved all of my stuff to Boston, and started living my life on my terms. When I say on my terms, I mean I stopped trying to live the life that I felt had been set out for me - grow up, get married, live in the same hometown I grew up, have kids,

Sometimes when you’re creating something, you have to abandon the original sketch or story outline and start over again. Sometimes trying to rearrange the pieces and stitch them together isn’t enough.

Sometimes you just have to blow up your life for it to come together again. 

And if that’s what you need to do, I know it takes courage, it takes honesty, it takes support from friends - but what I also know - and many of you out there also know - it can be done. It really can.