Who I Am to Who I’ve Been
There was a time when I thought I knew my plan for life because I thought I’d figured it all figured out.
I had it in my head at one point that I wanted to be a student counseling advisor tasked with designing a path to graduation for students attempting to obtain a degree. I was aware even then that so many resources were not being utilized by the vast majority of students. While I was constructing many different iterations of what my future could look like, most students saw only one option for themselves and that was the one they selected as a high school student. My ever-evolving worldview led me to switch from a Bachelor of Arts to a Bachelor of Science in Biology (also they stopped offering Level 3 Arabic so I would’ve had to start over with a new foreign language). I was awake at 4 AM on registration days and had already written out my proposal for my senior research project in my second year.
I also thought at one point that I wanted to be a naturopathic physician, like the doctor I worked for, but I never fully committed because I always left a little room for life to take the wheel. At that point, a lot of life’s messages were shrouded in hedonism, as they are for young people. We could resist our earthly indulgences and continue down a philosophical life of solitude, but the human experience benefits from a Rumspringa. Every maiden is initiated through a trip to Hades. I certainly participated in my fair share of debauchery. While I still wanted to do plant medicine, it was in more of a… lets say experiential way.
Back then, I had a strong desire to be nothing like my parents. If a prospective job even seemed remotely like what they did then I wanted no part in it. For someone obtaining a biology degree that had parents involved in both Natural Resources Conservation Services and Wildlife Management, this left me with few options other than medical in the realm of biology. Society convinced me to believe my parents were lame somehow. They truly are incredible people though I just didn’t understand the value of their wisdom at the time. Since they weren’t University graduates, I was under the impression their experiences couldn’t help me understand my own.
In the pits of Hell, I suffered in self-inflicted solitude. My parents had split and were never really much for conversation anyway, so we would go months without talking. I usually would call them when shit hit the fan and usually in a hysterical tone. Once I had to call my mom from jail and once I had to call my dad and tell him I’d been t-boned in a nearly deadly car accident, among many other awful tragedies. I never called to see how they were doing or to check in on other family members. I’d selfishly call when I needed them to cover my ass and every time, they would come to my aid.
Including the time I called my mom to tell her I was leaving my boyfriend. She told me I couldn’t come to her straight away (because of Hurricane Sally), but I talked to her everyday during that 2-week period of staying in hotels. My dad accepted the fact that I was attempting to get married to someone I’d never even met in person during a psychotic post-breakup breakdown, because it was my adult decision. So my healing from a bad relationship and subsequent situationships has involved a lot of appreciation for my parents and all they have been through to keep me alive and well.
I felt like I had years of repentance to go through for being a brat. I began to make my life miserable again in an indentured servant kind of way. They never asked that of me, I just had residual unworthiness swimming around in my head. Slowly I began to realize they’d forgiven me for all of my past mistakes and that they were just happy to have me around. Sure they appreciate my help but I know they don’t need it. They genuinely love me and want nothing but the best for me. For so long I thought they wanted to hold me back from big dreams, but I’m starting to understand that they only want to help me realize them by applying their lived-experiences to my experience (albeit in their own way which is spectacularly limited from my perspective, of course).
Now that I’ve got some self-esteem stacked up, I’m leaning into the opportunities they present to me. With my mom there are still lessons she and I need to learn together about openness and trust. My dad and I continue to flesh out (literally haha) my role in carrying on his legacy as a taxidermist. But I want to do it my way, so there is this constant tension from conflicting interests: my parents’ being preservation of my life and mine being an innate desire to take risks. While I used to run away from the discomfort of this dynamic, I now embrace it as the process of polishing and finishing work on my existence.
Originally written in Collective Journaling at The Stoa
