July 18, 2014
All this time, I was known for being the outgoing, cheerful
and laid back kind of girl. Even my mom thought I was an easy go lucky type. I
really hope I saw myself that way when I’m in the midst of my solitude. But no,
it’s just not the case.
As a matter of fact, I’m the
all-things-should-be-thought-and planned-before-execution kind. I got used to
the idea that everything should be analyzed over and over again just to be
sure. I used to write all the pros and cons on a sheet of paper then think of
all the consequences each option could have then decide from there. It’s like
my life has always been based on a flowchart. It’s like my everyday is
conceptualized by how well I managed yesterday’s business. Everything should be
run through my head first before anything else… even my emotions. Is it proper
that I start to get mad? Is it proper to cry already? Should this hurt? Should
this make me happy? Must I show that I appreciate a certain gesture? Should I
look shock now? I may seem like a robot to you given that I seem “programmed”.
I wasn’t born that way obviously, it’s just that I got used to it. Don’t I act
on impulse? I do, and that’s the reason I keep telling myself to think and
analyze everything first before I act because my impulses are stupid or the
best way to put it is, they make me look stupid.
Moreover, I’m a complete control freak. Everything should be
in order, everything should be as planned. I may have an eye for remedial
management but as much as possible I don’t want anything to obstruct all my
plans. I know, I know, life is not always smooth sailing and all that but I
still think that when all things are arranged and you have plan B-Z for back
up, everything’s going to be alright.
Everything was A-okay…that was before life decided to
execute its little trick on me. Life really has a wicked sense of humor. Funnily
enough, I was at the receiving end.
As I’ve said, I’ve been used to taking control of my life,
that’s the reason why my life was going at the direction I’ve always planned. Everything
was properly schemed. I trusted my plans, I trusted people to make those plans
come to life. But then, I trusted too much. Trust takes some pinches of
dependency, and given that I was an independent woman, I was blindsided because
I never knew that the trust holding my plans together was the same trust that
would destroy me, and everything I had in mind.
Being off balanced would be an understatement; I was
completely out of the wire. I felt like free falling. I kept on waiting for the
time my feet would touch the ground.
After the catastrophe, I took a strong hold of my life. I took
a mental note of everything that was happening. I was analyzing every detail of
my life just for me to understand what went wrong. I was desperate to
understand where things start to come undone. I was desperate for answers so I won’t
have to make the same mistakes twice. But then, in my search for all those whys,
I went home empty handed but with a heart full of burdensome emotions I can’t
event start to sort, but with experience in controlling emotions, I believed I’ve
handled them quite well.
Unfortunately, I came to a point when my control broke. It
was difficult to hold everything in. I was an active volcano then, anytime, I could
explode. There was like surging lava inside me and I just can’t seem to take a
hold of it, until such time I decided to talk to my mom.
I wasn’t the type to show emotions to my family. In their
eyes, I was the achiever, I was the easy going, confident girl who topped her
exams and who just wants to stay in her room and read books may it be for academic
purposes or for leisure. But they don’t care as long as I was a reading a book.
So when I started talking to my mom. I was crying in front of her and I told
her how hard it is to go on a day and think of how unworthy I was because I
discovered my castle was made up of sand. I kept on telling her that everything
was going according to plan but then one day, everything was going on the
opposite direction and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. She was just sitting
across me stunned. I could not shock her more than she already was. These were
her words: “it didn’t occur to me how negative you are, I’ve always pegged you
as a confident and happy person. But never did I imagine how harsh you are to
yourself. Enjoy your life, be young because you are, just go with the flow.”
Then it hit me really hard, I was so busy taking control
that I forgot to live my life. Realizations hit me head on and I’ve never been
so thankful. These are the things I’ve learned:
Stop controlling everything in your life because it will
wear you out and eventually frustrate and disappoint you because you’ll realize
that it’s an elusive thing to do. It’s like pushing a wall, it doesn’t take you
anywhere but it exhausts everything in you.
If it’s meant to happen, it will happen. Beautiful things do
not happen by force or control, they happen when you learn to let go of the
urge to become their puppeteer.
You don’t need to plan everything in life, you don’t need to
analyze those bits of details, and life isn’t a big test to be prepared for
every time. The problem is, we worry too much. We indulge ourselves in
preparing for a battle that doesn’t exist. We build forts around us without
realizing that those walls impede us from seeing how our lives should be; we
impede ourselves from seeing how beautiful our lives could be.
Lastly, go with the
flow. I know, this has been the most popular cliché when opening the book
of how to live your life but this is one of the truest things that one has to
do. Sometimes being brilliant means knowing when not to think. Just learn to
feel, and embrace everything life has to offer because that’s the only way you
could see and understand why some things have to happen in your life.
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