A Year Later
The last newsletter I wrote was in September 2023, a year where my job as a recruiter had dried up, layoffs were frequent, and I was a foreigner living in Paris. Additionally, there was financial stress, and a built-up resentment of holding myself back from making a career as an actress and writer happen. I felt stuck, angry at myself for all the unforeseen circumstances that had arrived at my doorstep. I bounced between the extremity of worrying about how I would make a living and wanting something new for myself.
With all the decisions in front of me, there was an immediate decision that needed to be made: either stay or leave Paris. So I made a move down to the south of France for six months as a temporary solution, subletting my apartment while hunting down the next job opportunity.
During my time in Toulouse, I spent most of it sitting on the steps of a bridge looking out over the river. The town’s leisure pace only offered more time for introspection. I had no distractions between looking at myself and my past. At present, I felt too suffocated by the prospect of leaving a place I worked to call home. I spent sunsets feeling angry and defeated. I came back each day to the same steps watching life come and go around me, and I cried. All while being in the midst of a new relationship, that was sped up by my current situation. Life was also making me confront my belief of independence. I always planned to have my own just in case. To be prepared in case the relationship did not work. I worked for years keeping relationships at a distance for fear that maybe there would be a moment where I misplaced my trust in someone. Yet, there I was having help from another.
I was in a relationship and felt that I had nothing to offer. Who was I when I wasn’t making money? Able to support myself? Not fun to be around? Not feeling like me? Not sleeping at night due to insistent thoughts that made me admit I didn’t really like who I was. I didn’t know how to like myself. I never gave it thought. I thought the game of survival was to make sure everyone else liked you. Everything was changing, and there were choices that still required my attention. I was stuck, scared of making any decisions that could result in becoming a permanent mistake. I remained in a state of worry that revealed other less desirable qualities about me. When I was frustrated, I was short-tempered. When I was dissatisfied, I blamed other people and things. When things felt soulfully too hard to bear, I retreated. When I didn’t like something, I tried to bend it to my rule.
This time the more I attempted to bend life around me, the crazier I felt. Yet, each time I sat on the steps, feeling something deeper than my dissatisfaction pulling me. I had told myself that if I accepted life currently as it was, I was giving up on what it could be. On all the possibilities. My own potential. I went in circles, knowing that feeling the absorbent amount of worry and stress would eventually kill me. I had to face the fact that it was going to be harder to go backward than forward. And forward was going to require effort and energy if something was going to change. I also knew going backward would be that permanent mistake.
If there was no going backwards, I had to begin somewhere. Starting with making peace with myself that maybe I was not fixed. During my walks and time on the steps, I saw the leaves shift colors. I saw how winter emptied the bridge of people. The water levels were decreasing. I noticed the ground losing its moisture. If nothing in nature was fixed, how was I excluded? Why wouldn’t the tides of my desires change like the ocean? Why couldn’t I want to walk along another path? What kept me from committing to a different career? Allowing myself to have someone who I can trust to care for me in my relationship? Why could friendships not change and even end? Everything about me was growing and changing, and the notion of a fixed idea of myself was causing internal discord. I began to see the expectations of myself from how I currently defined myself. I had forged an image of myself, a partial truth. It was a partial truth that I accepted as absolute, that lacked new information.
If who I had grown into was a partial truth, then maybe there were other things I had yet to discover about myself. Now that I could not envision anything forward, I had to embrace a new present; trial and error along the way. If I could listen to what was speaking within me, then maybe I could trust myself. How could I value the voice assured me that everything was happening for a reason, while I was in the middle of this instability?
