What happens when you no longer want the life you have?
Until the age of 33, my life was on track. I’d graduated from Harvard with honors, married my college boyfriend, and was earning a six-figure salary. We’d bought a house and were getting ready to start a family.
Successful, but not happy
From the outside, I was knocking it out of the park according to pretty much every metric of success. But on the inside, I couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that I wasn’t fulfilled on some deep, existential level and there had to be more to life. I’d spent years trying to convince myself that what I had was enough and I should shut up and be grateful. But you can only lie to yourself for so long.
The truth was, I wanted more. I wanted a life I didn’t have to convince myself to be grateful for. I wanted a life of passion, purpose, and creativity.
I was living a version of dream life…just not mine.
In retrospect, many of the choices I’d made were choices I thought I should make.
I’d married my boyfriend because he was brilliant and funny and we loved each other. But also because we were too scared of disappointing our conservative parents by moving in together without getting married. And because the ways in which I was dissatisfied in our relationship didn’t feel sufficient to break up over. How could you throw away years of building a life with someone who’s good and loves you and makes you laugh simply because you craved things on an emotional level that he couldn’t provide?
I didn’t know that wanting something was enough to make it a priority.
Because I hadn’t trusted myself enough to make decisions outside of the societal checklist I’d assimilated as my own. Because I had never stopped to ask: my life was successful by whose metrics?
And then I stayed married because I’d stood up in front of all the people I loved in this world and announced that I would be spending the rest of my life with this person, through thick and thin…and if I went back on a promise that big, what would my word ever mean again? And so through years of his depression and my supporting us financially and me not getting my needs met, we tried to make it work.
What would life look like if I traded in the ‘shoulds’ for what I truly desired?
While my relationship was not the only thing I was dissatisfied with (and I don’t believe that you can find fulfillment externally anyway), daring to ask what trading in the shoulds would look like brought me to the question of: how do you extricate yourself from the person whose life is inextricably mixed up with your own? I’d started dating my husband when we were 18. I had spent almost every day of my adult life with him up until that point. I had never navigated adulthood outside of the context of that relationship; I had never experienced adult life without compromise.
Living my truth
Turns out, when you’re able to let go of the person you’ve built your entire life around, it becomes a lot easier to let go of everything else that’s no longer serving you either. To say no to the things I was doing more out of obligation than desire. To let go of stuff I’d accumulated that was no longer bringing me joy. To become intentional about how I spent my time and money and energy, and whom I spent it with. Until my life eventually became a reflection of who I am at my core.
The process of dismantling and building anew is not for the faint of heart. But having the courage to live your truth…I think that’s what we’re all here on this Earth to do.
Living life out of order
At 24, I was married while my friends were single and dating and unencumbered. Then at 33, I was suddenly single while my friends were getting married and popping out babies. The opportunity to be single and date and explore — and most importantly, to figure out who I am and what I want now — is the second chance I never thought I would have. But I definitely feel like I’m living my life out of order, and that can be challenging.
On the other hand, living a life where everything is aligned with my heart’s deepest desires? Maybe that’s the only metric of success that counts, at any age.
