It’s Your Life

I know that my life doesn’t make a lot of sense to a lot of people. I know that the choices I've made, and the choices that I continue to make, aren’t always the most reasonable option in the eyes of the crowd. But even if I tried to explain myself, tried to explain the chaotic rationale that brought me here, it wouldn’t matter. Because I also know that I don’t really care if my life makes sense or seems reasonable or appears successful in the traditional, agreed-upon-by-society way. 

What matters to me is that my life makes me happy, and that the less my life seems to make sense to other people, the happier I am living it. 

That’s not to say that following your heart is easy, or that living a less-than-conventional life does not come with consequences. People are disinclined to be supportive of things they do not understand, and many aren’t shy about sharing that.

Should you choose the unbeaten path, there will likely be a level of alienation from people who care too much about what their life looks like, and who demand an explanation as to why and how you could want a life that looks so different from theirs. 

There will likely be pointed comments from self-righteous nay-sayers who don’t believe that success comes from anything other than hard work and suffering - specifically, the very same kind of hard work and suffering that they themselves chose to endure. The kind that they then feel entitled to inflict upon others, because they had to go through it, so you should too. As though their own unhappiness means you somehow owe them yours.

Even well-meaning skeptics who try to warn you about the uncertainty of your path are often projecting their own fears, conditioned to think that a life lived outside of the norm is a life gone to waste.

I’ve heard it all, but what these people don’t seem to understand is that I have no interest in living their life, no interest in living a life that is the result of making choices other people think I should make.

I care far more about how my life makes me feel than what other people think of it. And the benefits of that, of working toward a life that is fulfilling and happy and created entirely by me and for me, FAR outweigh the costs.

In choosing to follow my far-fetched aspirations, I liberated myself from societal expectations - and not just those surrounding work and my career. Realizing that I did not have to work the way people thought I should work, that my career did not have to look like what people thought it should look like, helped me understand that I had been allowing the outside world to dictate all kinds of areas of my life. And it helped me put a stop to it. 

Hating my body because society taught me that was the only option? Not necessary. I get to love myself and my body no matter what, because I choose to. 

Downplay the things that I’ve gone through, because the reality of it might make people angry or sad or upset? I don’t think so. Not when I know how healing it is when I choose to speak my truth. 

Allow people to treat me badly and get away with it because it’s easier not making waves than it is to be alone? Not a chance. I’d choose being happily alone over being unhappily surrounded by people who walk all over me every. single. time.

For most of my life, I had thought things like these were non-negotiable. I never questioned why I might think these were facts of life, or why I thought I had to follow them.

It had simply never occurred to me that I had any choice in the matter. Let alone the fact that I had a choice in all of my matters. 

Of course, coming to terms with the fact that these were choices, not rules of living, was difficult. Reckoning with the knowledge that I had been choosing to be miserable, that I had been choosing to stay silent and hate myself and let people treat me like shit, was an incredibly painful process. But it also set me free. 

If I was the one choosing to be miserable, then I was also the one who could choose not to be.

So I did. 

I stopped making decisions based on what I thought I “should” do, and instead made them based on what I wanted to do. 

I stopped letting fear and uncertainty hold me back from doing or saying what I wanted to do or say.

I stopped basing how I felt about myself and my life on what other people thought about it. 

I gave myself the time and the space to get to know what exactly I actually wanted from my life, and who I wanted to be.

And while the details are still somewhat murky, because I am growing and changing and learning every single day, there was one overall theme - I want my career to be whatever I want it to be. I want to be whoever I want to be. I want my life to be whatever I want it to be.

I want the freedom of making these choices for myself, and the thrill that comes from knowing I am the only one standing in the way of it. 

I used to think people were at least sort of kidding when they said “you’re your own worst enemy,” but I’ve finally come to understand what they really meant. I spent over a decade of my life making myself miserable because I couldn’t get out of my own way. Because I couldn’t just let myself be myself.

As soon as I stopped fighting against the unconventional life my inner self had always craved, as soon as I accepted myself exactly as I am, big dreams, crazy choices, rebellious spirit and all, I was able to experience real, genuine, actual happiness for the first time.

So while my life may not make sense to other people, I don’t care because it makes sense to me. I do what I want, when I want to do it. I work how I want, for the people I want to work for. I get to be unapologetically myself, whenever I want to be (which is all the time). I get to follow my intuition and create a life that reflects the person I am and the person I want to become. I get to be happy, because I choose to. Simple as that.

Your life may not make sense to other people, but it doesn’t have to. So long as it makes sense to you.