Not Ready…
Almost like every other female, I use to think that I had life all figured out. I knew what I wanted and the exact steps I would have to take in order to achieve the goals I had set for myself. I remember when I was in Junior High school, my friends and I would map out our entire future with a pencil on a piece of loose leaf paper. We were going to own a four floor building, on each floor we would run a business that pertained to what we wanted to be. On one floor, a girl would own a spa, second floor, a girl with a daycare center, me with a magazine company..and so on. Although the idea itself still seems like something I would be interested in doing, and wasn’t really a bad idea in the first place, life hasn’t seemed to happen the way we mapped it out to be. Let’s be real, we all went our separate ways after junior high school anyway; not realizing that maybe we were a little too overzealous with our future plans.
Speaking for myself, almost everything I planned didn’t happen the way I wanted it to. At the age of 24, I’m still trying to find myself in some ways. I’ve went to college for Journalism, dropped out, and started working in various jobs in the food business. I’ve worked as a server, waitress, hostess, and manager. I’ve had great paying jobs and I’ve had jobs that sucked terribly but imagine how I, a woman who believed she would be the Editor In Chief of Ebony Magazine by now, have no clue where life is exactly taking me. I’m now stuck between wanting to go back to school for Journalism, or maybe Business Management? And working my way up to managing a restaurant… again. Ugh…
This is exactly how my brain works, I don’t know what I want. All I know is that I don’t want to work forty hours a week just to make ends meet. I want to live comfortably and have a career doing something that I actually enjoy doing. Is that so hard to ask?.. Yes, yes it is hard to ask actually, harder than most think.
And dealing with a relationship on top of that is even more difficult. After meeting my boyfriend, I tended to slightly sabotage the relationship by trying to speed up the process. I’m sorry but once I find someone I’m interested in, my inner childhood dreams of marriage and a family with a dog in the suburbs starts to spin out of control. “Save money!!! No don’t buy that!” I would say. “We need the money for our apartment one day in the next two years! Ugh, why do you want a big TV now?! Why not wait til we move in together! It’s been two years where’s my Ring!!!?” Imagine how annoying I was.
I now realize how unhealthy it was to speed up love in the first pace. We’re both working hard to take care of ourselves so that we’ll be comfortable enough to take care of each other one day. Although I know I want to spend the rest of my life with him, the rest of my life doesn’t have to be right now. I literally had to slow myself down.
I had to finally realize, life doesn’t have to be what I always wanted. And I shouldn’t force it to be so. Wouldn’t it be a lot more interesting to just see what life has to offer me instead trying to direct it into what I think perfection should be? What if life is a way better author than I am? Maybe perfection isn’t what I really wanted in the first place, obviously we can all see that I’m the type to switch up anyway. Most of all, it was super stressful forcing myself and my partner to move at a pace that none of us were ready for. I use to be disappointed in myself when things didn’t work out, but I’m finally at the point where I am content with whatever happens. I’m still working hard to make ends meet, I’m still paying $700 to rent this small Brooklyn room in Bedstuy, I’m still dreaming about one day becoming a famous Journalist but you know what, it’s all good.
Life may not be what I want it to be but I’m happy, and it’ll all work out for the best soon. As long as I stay positive and keep working hard, I’ll get there. But as for now, I’m okay with saying I’m not ready.
-Sade Ashley
