Being alone in a pandemic while struggling with a neuromuscular disease in a disordered,declining town I have been upset and frustrated constantly. I have gone down the “What if” rabbit hole, convinced if I had made different, better choices my life would have been more productive, peaceful, more secure… better.
I have rolled it back to 1997 and considered the choices I made up til then and if I hadn’t moved in the direction I did. There are lots of people I wouldn’t have met. I was still restless, and scared… something had to change, I had to try for my dreams. Oh, but the pain and financial hits I endured, maybe that wasn’t the pivot.
I rolled back to 1991 and found stability but I wasn’t happy in the city. My son wasn’t safe, didn’t know his father,I felt trapped in an unstable relationship or trapped in a city that felt stifling in stability.
I rolled back to 1989 when I thought it was too risky to move to Finland in a small town to be with a man I met on a weekend and give up my life in the US. So scary, so insane, so exciting, so far past my comfort zone I couldn’t do it.
Today it occurred to me to look up a man I met only once but he made his intentions very clear. He was a pastor, I was only 22 and he really scared me, I could see only darkness and loneliness. It would have been safe, secure, predictable. It would have made my mother happy to brag about. It was at this moment I jumped into the ocean of life knowing his life was not mine. I found he died last year, 32 yrs in the same place, never married,no kids.
I have to accept what my life became, a wildly colored adventure of lovers, animals, kids, travel, illness, injustice, heartbreak. It really hasn’t been easy or always fun and often I felt unprepared but I learned so very much being passionately imperfect.