Surrendering

If I had to give a theme to 2015, I would summarise it with the word “surrendering”.

I’ve had to accept that things were simply not going to happen for me. Or at least they weren’t going to happen in the way they happen for other people… That is, if they ever happen at all. Which I’m not sure about.

I’ve been forced to surrender and accept the way my life is turning out.

Except that “acceptance” or even “surrendering” cannot possibly do justice to the actual feeling.

So let me try again.

Surrendering to a bicycle accident.

Surrendering to poverty.

Surrendering to loneliness and celibacy, for the fourth year running.

Surrendering to unemployment and underemployment.

Surrendering to the abject lack of interest the world has shown over my writing, my website, my blog, my ideas.

No, “surrendering” does not do justice to the actual feeling.

You know what “surrendering” feels like?

Carnage.

Evisceration.

Butchery.

Slaughter.

Annihilation.

I suppose I am committed to writing, even when there are no easy answers.

Funny. In my life there are never easy answers. I wonder if it’s because I am smart… I’ve been given a story I can handle, and it’s certainly not as easy as other people’s, going by the stories they tell about their own lives. Their words fail to reach me, most of the time. The edges are too smooth, the answers too shiny. There are happy endings. “Everything happens for a reason” all over the place.

I fail to see how “anything happens for a reason” in my life.

This woman said to me at work the other day:

“Do you have another job?”

Me: No.

“Have you ever thought of getting another job, doing something else?”.

Me: (losing it) Why yes, that’s why I went to University.

I have a degree in Astrophysics.

I am bilingual.

I am very smart.

And I spend my day washing dishes and making coffee…

Surrendering.

I was just telling my Twitter Friend (a friend whom I met through Twitter) that I was feeling “meh” this evening.

He said “Bless you. You need good times, romance, job, etc.”

It’s not hard to see what’s missing in my life.

But the Universe is relentless.

Surrendering. Again.

I will be going back to my home country in a month or so.

I haven’t been there in 2 years.

Last time I visited, I had just started my website. It was intended as a business, combining writing and the hard-earned wisdom I gathered in my last 5 years of Very Useful Experience (aka: going through Hell and using yoga to get myself out, or at least try to).

2 years have gone by, and my “business” continues to not be a “business” at all. I have not found a way to many any money.

Any money at all.

Surrendering. Yet again.

Last week someone found out I was single, so they said “Try online dating”.

My response? An overly enthusiastic “online dating!!! Why, I never would have thought of that!!!”.

They replied “yeah, try online dating”.

Yes, apparently there are some people who do not understand sarcasm.

I registered in an online dating site last February. I had no intention of doing it, but then in the 3 months prior, I felt the very gentle pull to give it a try, as if the Universe was guiding me. I spent 3 months writing my online dating profile, making sure it reflected every aspect of me. It went live on February. It is now November.

The Universe is relentless.

Surrendering. Even more. Surrendering, every day.

Again and again surrendering to the way things are, to the way the Universe wants them to be, which is so, so contrary to what I would like them to be.

Surrendering.

Surrendering.

I have it on good authority that surrendering to the way things are, making peace with reality and trusting in the Universe is the path to sanity and miracles.

I have found some sanity. Not so many miracles.

No miracles at all, in fact.

Surrendering to the way things are means accepting all the “maybes”.

Maybe I am not meant to find love. Maybe I’m meant to be single, my whole life.

Maybe I am not meant to have any money. Maybe I’m meant to get by, make coffee, wait tables, and survive.

Maybe I am not meant to have a career, write books, write anything, give talks.

Maybe I am not meant to have a family. Maybe I am meant to be alone, and bear no children.

Who’s to say, right? I mean, who am I to say the way things are is not the way it “should” be?

If this is the way the Universe wants things to be. Then maybe this is precisely how they should be.

Who am I to argue with “what is”, when “what is” has been decided by the Universe?

The enormity of this question… And I find myself having to deal with it, day in and day out.