I’ve had my share of dead ends and wrong turns in life, both in relationships and in my career. I’ve made just as many poor choices about the men I’ve become entangled with as I have about all of the jobs that were a terrible fit for my interests and personality.
The common denominator, of course, is low self-esteem. Deep down, I don’t believe I deserve a man or a job that I really love, so I’ve repeatedly settled for less and lost myself in the process.
The result is a trail of empty relationships and soul-crushing jobs behind me. When I look ahead, the best I can confidently predict is more of the same. It’s hard not to expect the future to resemble the past, even if you hope and pray that it doesn’t.
I’m currently between relationships and (more or less) between jobs. I’m at a crossroads, but lately it’s been feeling much more like a dead end. The sad thing is, the only person who’s led me here is me.
I am my own guide and compass
I don’t know where to go from here, but at least I can say that I’m glad I didn’t stay where I was. What I was doing wasn’t working.
I’m glad that I left my corporate job in 2021, but I’ve yet to replace it with enough work to give me financial stability. I’m glad that I didn’t stay with the guy I was involved with from the end of 2018 to the beginning of 2019, but I haven’t come close to replicating what I had with him. It’s probably a good thing that I haven’t; it was amazing physically, but also quietly emotionally devastating. What I should be doing is looking for something better.
As it is, I’m barely working and I’m not dating at all. I really need to get moving and make the right decisions to make progress in the right direction. I’ve just been feeling so lost about where to go and what to do next.
I’m not where I thought I’d be. I didn’t think I’d be with any of those guys or at any of those jobs, either. Nonetheless, I have to accept the fact that I’m the one who made those decisions, and I need to accept the consequences that have followed.
A million and one decisions have led me to where I am now. Whether or not they were the right decisions isn’t actually that important, because I can’t change the past. All I can do is decide where to go from here.
Unfortunately, no one can tell me what my destination should be or the best way to get there. I have been struggling to accept this. If I’m lost and the only person I have to help me find my way is me, won’t I be lost forever? I can’t see clearly through this mental fogginess. I can’t find true north.
Maybe I need to just start walking anyway. After all, who said I had to decide on my destination right now? Maybe I’m just supposed to decide which way to go while I’m on my way. Maybe any direction I choose to go from here is valid.
Maybe I can trust my internal compass more than I thought.
A lesson from my mentor
During the first few months that I was working on my thesis project at art school, I was experimenting with photography and collage, even though my primary artistic medium is ink on paper. My work was starting to go in a darker direction than I’d anticipated. The self-portraits I was taking were unveiling my deepest fears and insecurities. I was uncomfortable. I felt like I’d taken a wrong turn and I was forgetting my original intention for my project.
One day, in a meeting with my thesis advisor, I told her that I was feeling lost. I’d decided that the disturbing self-portraits were no longer the direction I wanted to pursue, but I didn’t know what to do next. I was hoping she could tell me.
She looked at me and told me something I’ll never forget. She said I wasn’t truly lost; I’d led myself there. She said that if I was the one who’d led me down that path, I was the one who could find my way out of it.
I think what she was really trying to tell me was to trust my gut instinct. My gut had told me to take those photographs, and my gut was telling me I wanted to try something else. The only way out of the quagmire was to trust my gut again. It was true then and it’s true today.
I led myself here—between jobs and between relationships—because the old jobs and old relationships weren’t working. Just because I’m feeling confused about where to go next doesn’t mean I should have stayed where I was.
I’m just going to start walking, trusting that I’ll gain momentum and get where I’m meant to be eventually. My gut is telling me that waiting until I’ve figured out my exact destination is going to take too long and is probably a futile effort anyway. Perhaps I’ll only know my destination after I’ve arrived there. Perhaps there’s more than one way to get there, too.
I got myself this far. I’m going to trust myself as much as I can for the rest of my journey. The only compass I have is the one inside me. Only I can discover what my true north is.
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image 1 Grégory ROOSE from Pixabay 2 image by Bronisław Dróżka from Pixabay 3 image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay
