Not even your number one dream. It’s okay, I promise.
Can you imagine where you would be if you’ve had become the person you wanted to be when you were a child? An astronaut, a magician, a president maybe? It really felt as if the sky was the only limit.
I wanted to be a doctor. It’s the only dream I can remember of, and the only that had mattered to me while growing up. I don’t know where it came from, if it was from that conversation between my parents and uncles, joking about what their kids would become. If it was because of the toy medkit I received for Christmas fifteen years ago. Or if it was because my sister was born with the Down syndrome and I wanted to, somehow, heal her.
All I know is that the idea of becoming a medic was planted in my spirit and grew without boundaries, turning into this solid dream that was driving me and leading me to stay in the top 3 during all my studies.
When I was seventeen, right after my baccalaureate (at the end of high school), I left Gabon and my family for France, in order to study medicine. I had never traveled abroad before that nor lived alone. But it was necessary and I was sure I could handle it.
The first year of med studies in France ends with a competitive exam. Only 10 % of all freshmen are allowed to continue. I was absolutely convinced I would be one of them. I was smart, very good in sciences, I had graduated with honors, I was ready. I thought I would smash this year and the exam and roar to the world that I was there to win.
I was also full of myself and too confident. I was underestimating the challenge: study difficulties, the loneliness to come, the long cold winter. The doubt. The creeping and petrifying doubt.
It ended badly.
I failed. More than that, I lost. I ended up with a rank which didn’t even let place to hope, to say to myself “if only…”. More than that, I felt like it was all my fault. Like I didn’t work hard enough, like I didn’t give my very best.
I failed and all that I believed in — mostly myself — started to crumble. The sky fell. And I followed.
I was alone, depressed, with no purpose in life. What will I do? What do I want to do? What else can I do?
I had no idea cause plan B had never been an option.
I couldn’t think properly, I couldn’t react. I rushed myself in a plan of going to South Africa and study medicine there, only to realize that it wasn’t what I needed.
I was broken, and I needed to heal.
I had to escape the mist around me. I just didn’t know how to do so. Then, a little miracle happened.
I told the truth. To myself. To my parents. I stopped acting all tough, I stopped lying. I sent an email to my dad, revealing how lost I was, how depressed I was feeling.
It’s funny I think, how in this family everyone is struggling to express his feelings and how, written words have been, so many times, the only way for us to have access to the heart of the others. Anyway, this is what my father sent me :
Life is long, my little girl. We often stumble, sometimes we fall, but always we get up and back on the road. The key is to learn the lessons and put them into practice.
You’re at your first fall. I know that you will find within you the mental, spiritual and physical resources to continue your life and follow the path that opens before you.
When you identify the one you want to follow, I will be there, listening and available to accompany you.
Straighten your head and move forward.
He encouraged me. He told me that I can. He showed me that he trusted me.
His message made me cry. A lot. It made me cry myself to sleep actually. It helped me take the first step on the recovery road. It helped me remember, as the days passed, the many little other dreams I had put aside.
It helped me realized that there was still, in front of me, an endless sea of possibilities.
So yeah, all dreams won’t come true. It’s hard. It’s painful. It hurts the heart and scratches the soul. But still, we will recover and find something only we can do. Still, we are breathing and still, there is hope. If your number one dream cannot and will not come true, give a go to your numbers two and three, even to the number thirty-six.
Straighten your head and move forward.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to clap, comment or follow me if you’ve enjoyed it!
Ed.
