Something Different

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay ​

My life has no shortage of profound experiences. Some of them negative, many of them positive. I find myself watching documentaries about people who have gone through some kind of transformation or connected with something that changed life as they knew it. Recently, I have been watching the documentaries about cults and see how easy it would be for people to get sucked in. In short, people like me. I feel like I am continuing to search for something but I don't know what. Some bigger? Something better? Something more? Something less? This nagging "something" is not going away. In some ways, I find this "something" to be a strong feeling. 

When I wanted to study abroad so badly my junior year of high school and again my junior year in college, I thought these were going to be life changes experiences. They were! Don't get me wrong, Those experiences didn't change my life in the way that I thought they would. Maybe my expectations were incorrect, or, more likely, I didn't know what I thought "life-changing" meant. I have great memories and connections from those days. While many of those days were hard and I experienced home-sickness just about every day while I was gone, I saw and experienced some pretty amazing things.

Then, I thought settling down and getting married would be the way my life would be. Well, we all know how that worked out. I won't say I will "never" get married or be in a significant relationship again, but my experiences have not been super positive and caused more heart-ache in my life. Because my heart is breaking for the loss of a few people and things right now, my heart is sort of shut off to those connections. While the connections are happy and fun, deep relationships have been lost whether I lost relationships because of my personal actions, I lost the relationship because of death, or the relationship failed over time. Any way I slice this one, really close relationships often have difficult endings for me. Seeking out a relationship while assuming it is going to end badly is probably not the best mindset to approach that whole ordeal.

Recovery then came. Recovery changed my life, no doubt. When I was learning things in the beginning, it was so exciting. Everything was so new and refreshing. When I watch a makeover show, I feel like I could submit my photo from detox and my photo of now and it would be clear how dramatically my life had changed for the positive. These feelings motivated me to go further in my education and even change careers. Again, I made some great connections, but the experience of grad school was huge letdown for me. I felt like I was going to change the world and spread recovery. I was going to do something big and exciting! I was going to see myself in doing something in advocacy. My first big position had that momentum. And, again, a huge letdown. Not only did the position drive me to the brink of sanity, all of the things that I thought were going to fulfill that "something" never happened. A majority of people didn't care what I was doing and my message fell flat.

In 2014, I got a chance to go a mission trip. I had heard so many stories about people having a life-changing experience on these trips. I made some great connections on this trip and really had some big ideas about things that I wanted to accomplish on that trip. Sadly, I learned how corrupt the area was that we traveled to and the severe limitations of what we could actually do during our time there. I talked with some of my other group members who had been on these trips before and they even said this mission trip was disappointing. 

So, I keep accomplishing things. I keep doing things - generally schooling. I have some ideas of things that I would like to do. But my life is missing something. I think this "something" is screaming louder after the loss of my friend, Kim. Life is so short and tomorrow is never guaranteed. If it were all to end suddenly, did I do what I wanted to do. In cliché terms - I have lived, I have laughed, I have loved. So, yeah I got some of the basics there. Have I accomplished what I wanted to? For the most part and I am doing what I want to do in terms of my career and my recovery. If it were all to end suddenly, I sure as hell hope that I am sober. That would be the biggest thing to me at this point.

Yet, here I am with this nagging something that is been hanging in my life since about 2013. What is it? What do I need? What do I want? I wish I knew because hanging with this feeling for nearly 10 years is driving me batty. The search remains "in process" I guess. Maybe I will sit with the universe and send out some stronger messages - "Hey, what's the 'thing' I need?"

I hope everyone is well. Take care of you!!
​Jules