I dragged myself out of bed and shuffled down the short hallway to my kitchen.
I followed the mindless routine of making coffee through sleepy eyes, stretching and yawning as I finished the task. I leaned both hands against the counter and watched the coffee perk and drip.
I sighed, wondering how many more mornings I was going to stare at the coffee maker thinking that I needed to make a change. Because the thing is, 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 pot and stop trying to jam the wrong puzzle piece into the wrong spot.
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.
If I’m being honest, that’s what I’d been trying to do for at least a year if not more. I’d been trying to settle for good enough, for jamming a puzzle piece into the wrong spot.
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 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 at a camera shop. 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 life that didn’t even seem like it was mine anymore.
I drank my coffee and thought what will it take?
The answer to that 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 to how and when I was going to make it 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 Main).
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. 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 terns.
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.