What's It Going to Take for You to Change Your Life?

What's it going to take for you to change your life?

Seriously. What will it take?

  • An unexpected lump?

  • A sudden layoff from a job you hated but tolerated for the money?  

  • The lingering, heartbreaking, soul-busting illness of your child or a parent?

Or the sudden empty space created by the loss of your partner, a space that can't be filled no matter how hard you try, but you try you try you try and then you just close the door and cry some more because no one really understands as they wait for you to get past your grief because you live in America where grief is seen as inconvenience and we'd rather not deal with those messy emotions because we have things to do and businesses to run and it would be so much easier if you could just be happier more of the time like your sister why can't you be like your sister? And damn it don't they think you've tried?

Is it going to take that?

Or will you look at your life today—this very day—with that cold eye you've been avoiding and decide:

  • What you're doing that is working for you 

  • What you're doing that is detracting from your bliss

  • What you're sacrificing that is okay with you

  • What you're sacrificing that makes you angry with yourself

  • What needs to change because you don't want to die this way oh God you don't want to die this way

Will you do that? Will you at least look? Do you have the courage for that?

It's not easy. I won't tell you it is.

Facing ourselves is the scary part of the movie, the part where you watch through the cracks between your fingers because you want to see but you don't. You're not sure you can handle any of it, yet there's this voice somewhere in the back of your mind that says you are stronger than you think and that you can do this, that you can do anything. You listen to that voice sometimes, when it's not drowned out by the shouter at the front of your mind, the one who says you are weak and worthy of nothing in this world. You don't believe the shouter, but you've never been able to totally silence her. She is the dog that won't stop barking, and she lives in you, too. 

Or will you spend another day making food and watching television and looking at cat photos and drinking wine and deadening your once-beating breathing living heart-stoppingly lovely soul because at least no one gets hurt except for you? Is that what you're going to do? Or not?

What's it going to take for you to change your life?  

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