Open Heart

It was today, upon entering Manhattan on the R train that things begin to settle.

When we last spoke, my life was, for all intents and purposes and for the matter of simplicity, pretty great. Things were going exactly as I wanted, and I was right where I thought I needed to be. I had a steady job I didn't necessarily care for, complete with dental, biweekly direct deposit, and a crippling sense of my youth slipping away under the facade of adulthood – pretty standard, by all accounts.  I had an active social life, complete with random encounters with that guy I kept running in to, or the girl I swore I would stop drinking with. I had a calendar overflowing with commitments I could honor or dishonor if I wanted, and a slew of dating profiles floating out amongst the masses and interwebs. I had a bookshelf filled with future reads, a fridge packed with food that I never touched, updated resumes hiding on my work computer, and piles of papers in a “to be sorted” file that continually grew until it became a “to be sorted” box.  My room was too small for my bed and my tiny Brooklyn apartment was too cluttered. I had roommates I adored and would take impromptu drunken-stupor-like walks from the village to Brooklyn across the Williamsburg bridge, entering the land of Never Never Land once more.

And then, as the infamous line states, everything changed.  Only this time, I am the one who changed everything.  As a recap, last summer, I was unhappy.  I was not in a good place, physically or mentally.  After an approximately one and a half month period of a not-so-attenuating depression and unintentional ten-pound weight loss, I decided I was done feeling sorry for myself.  I looked at my life and I asked myself two very simple questions: Why am I doing the things I am doing?  What do I want my life to look like?  Blast some girl-power-self-inspiring playlists (and maybe some 90’s era angst-y Lillith Fair) through the speakers and follow along.

I walked into October as one person, and emerged in June as another. Yet along the way, I stumbled into an old version of myself I thought I had lost, and really missed very much. I find that now, I'm rediscovering my zest, my drive, my motivation, mojo, and essence. It's all very esoteric and bizarre and wonderful and, for the first time in maybe 2 years, I feel genuinely happy.  Happy with myself, happy with where I am, happy with where I’m headed.  I was too distracted for too long - too overwhelmed by what I thought I was supposed to be doing, and less focused on what I should have been doing: discovering myself, enjoying my life, exploring my 20s, smiling at strangers and the occasional metaphorical dancing in the rain, if you will.

At the risk of sounding conceited, I’m really quite proud of myself.  In the past year, I have done things I never thought I would do.  I’ve said yes more than I’ve said no; I’ve explored new places and new surroundings without fear; I’ve changed jobs, twice, and not looked back; I’ve re-inspired myself and re-engaged myself in living the life I always wanted to live; I’ve surrounded myself with the positive and removed all the negative; I found what I (thought I had) lost and reclaimed it; I thought about what I wanted my life to look like, and I made it happen.

 

But most importantly, I took back what I so foolishly let slip away from.  I reclaimed my life as my own.

After all the ups and the downs, the hills and the slides, I feel like, maybe now, things are settling down to a happy medium.  Life is just returning to a normal. A normal I'm not sure I remember. A normal at the opposite spectrum of what I ever believed to be possible.

It’s simply incredible what can happen when you open your heart.