We have heard it said many times that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. And change. Regardless of how hard we fight for things to always stay the same, change is inevitable, and truth is, 9 times out of 10 the change is better than anything we were trying to hold on to. So is this a brilliant epiphany? Or simply a realization of something I really knew all along and just chose to ignore?
The first example I would like to draw on is my thesis. At the start of semester three of working on what is to be the culmination of two years of diligent studying to obtain a Master's degree, my thesis lector told me straight out: This is crap. You need to reorganize it or else it doesn't make sense. (Ok, ok, clarification: he didn't actually say the word 'crap' but he did tell me it was very badly organized and didn't follow logically). I was... overwhelmed. How was I going to reorganize a work of over 100 pages in just a short couple of weeks to be able to turn it in for its first final revision? I complained, I was stressed, I drank an incredible amount of coffee, and the I complained some more, and at the end of those two weeks, my thesis turned out ten times better than it ever was before the change.
Change is always scary. But it is very seldom bad.
I have realized this now because recently in my life there have been many changes. And I tried so hard to avoid them that I lost sight of... everything. And especially, of who I was. Just months after moving to Costa Rica I met who would become my best friend. At first the friendship was normal, we played basketball, watched sports, he invited me for lunch with his family or to watch movies. But somewhere along the line the friendship took a turn towards unhealthy, and one day it left me completely devastated and him completely undeserving and unappreciative of me.
How it reached this point is still a mystery to be, but it became an obsession. As a friend I trusted, he somehow managed to take control of every aspect of my life. Who I was with, where I went, when I saw him. At his asking, I would change anything I had already planned just to spend the day, again, with him. I was obsessed with making him happy and he was obsessed with controlling me and lying. Looking back now, I knew all along they were lies, but I chose to blind myself to them so that things would not change. I had my perfect little family in Costa Rica. Los cuatro fantasticos. Every Sunday we would watch the NFL, throw the football, spend hours together. And accepting the reality of what was happening would have changed all that. I would have been left watching football alone on Sundays, no one to throw the ball to, no one to make me laugh until I snorted or to hit when they said something ridiculously stupid. I was so afraid of how lonely my life would be without them that I ignored all the signs and continued forward naively down a path I knew could only lead to tremendous pain.
Of course the inevitable happened and there was really only one path left to take: end any remote spark of a friendship that had once been and... accept the change. And what has happened in my life since making that decision is so much better than what I had before. I met someone so much more worth my time, someone I never gave an honest chance to before because of my unfounded obsession. After months of severing all contact, I have finally overcome the chains he had me under and we have started again, because at one point the friendship was too beautiful to destroy. And I am happy. Uncontrollably happy. I wake up smiling and I go to bed thanking the Lord for the change that I was too scared to embrace.
Honestly, I am a very private person. Very few people, if any, know exactly what happened and I like it that way. Its easier to forget it. And I'm independent. But not in the good way. I don't ask for help, ever, and if I had, none of this would have happened. But we live, and we learn, and as long as we learn not to make the same mistake twice, we'll come out triumphant and in the end we'll be better because it all.
~para mi Rolito, gracias por hacerme tan feliz.
