Out of no where it hits me. Grief. Sadness. Disappointment. A loss of hope. All for a life we’ve just missed out on. A property that grew on me. A slow growth where I began to imagine things. A life. The next chapter. A home for now and the future. The tangible middle ground that would take us from being the ever adjusting travellers, finding our feet still (more than a year on), to a couple looking forward to and excited for all that is coming.
I know this feeling will pass and even as I type I remember all we have that I am grateful for. We aren’t homeless; we have family we can live with; I have a new job to start soon. Life actually isn’t too bad.
Sure, it’s not moving at a pace that we hoped for. Sure, since coming home I have felt like this is the road less travelled for me, where city life continues as my mind and body exist within it, but really, I’m still playing catch up.
Sure, my sense of self has changed endlessly and I have moments of never really knowing who I am now, what I keep from the past, what I let go of and what I build. Sure, it’s not been smooth. Or easy. Actually, it’s been pretty fucking hard and sometimes down right overwhelming. But hell, it could’ve been worse right?!
More recently…
I have been feeling the tug of the hamster wheel recently – the one I promised myself I would never get on again, the one I would look at from outside the cadge. But recently I have thought:
Wow. We work to pay off a mortgage that we don’t yet have. So we can provide for the children we dream of. Where does the fun fit in? Where does careless, reckless uninhabited happiness fit? Is it in the day to day or do we need to work harder to build it in?
So it’s been a funny road, this one of (non) property ownership. It’s left me feeling many things along the way and yet I can acknowledge, now it’s prematurely-over, that actually I wanted it. A lot. Even when I thought I didn’t.
Hard dreams
The thing about disappointment and sadness is that it can become so consuming that you can’t see what it’s taught you.
I’ve learnt so much about myself; I have pushed boundaries and confronted fears of the future; as a couple we have worked together, envisioning a future that is yet to happen but excited none the less.
Then sometimes, as I have fought my instinct to be short-termist, it had grabbed my throat and chocked me. Reminded me that deep down I’m frightened. And I didn’t always know what of.
Sometimes it’s because I don’t know how we get to all the things we want without becoming blind to the small things that make life great. How do we stop becoming impatient to rush ahead? What happens to appreciating the now? Can these two realms ever co-exist?
And sometimes, when I feel we’re almost there, I then think, what then? Will we be trapped? Is this it?
And now, as the future we were so close to getting slips from our grasp, I remind myself of all I’ve learnt and been through in this microcosm of life.
And it’s this.
It will all be ok, eventually. Dreams sought easily were never the big ones. The ones you fight yourself to achieve are this ones that grow you. Even if you don’t get them right away.
Mojo&Me xx