Together forever.

It might seem easy to write a Facebook update. And yes, in both theory and practice, it is. It's no more than putting one word after another and publishing it - and there you have it: one of trillions of updates put on a FB wall. But sometimes they aren't that easy to post. Sometimes they take an enormous amount of courage. Sometimes behind two lines stems years of losing oneself and months of finding one's way back. I remember my first update of this kind. It's quite hard to forget, since I started living my dream thanks to it. It was January 16, 2013, and it went as follows:
"Will paint a painting out of the first theme anyone of you comes up with. Give it to me! :)"
Seems so simple. But in order to write - and post - this tiny little two-line-plus-one-smiley update my life first needed to fall apart completely.

I can be stubborn. And if you combine that stubbornness with fear - well then you have a winner. You have a person who will do anything to keep things the way they are. Even sacrifice themselves. I had become this person. I had become the person who had started to sacrifice herself for the good of a relationship. For the good of a family in the making. For the good of a stable life. A safe life. I had devoted myself completely into making this relationship work. And then - in one night - it was all taken away from me. In one night what I had been working on for seven years to be my life, became the life of another woman. It literally made me want to die. And at the same time, it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Because, as I told you, I can be stubborn. And when you combine that stubbornness with fear - well then you also get a person who will not listen to her gut feeling anymore. Who does not want to see the signs. Who does not want to count the nights she's spending alone. Who does not want to admit how wrong it is that she's sitting with half a cooked lamb on a perfectly set table, a fridge full of hand made chocolate-dipped marzipan eggs, that it's Easter and she is sitting there - once again - alone. She will even accept "work" as an excuse - all because she does not want to lose everything she's worked so hard on at making work.

But I did lose it all. All of my hard work did go down the drain. (Unlike the chocolate-dipped marzipan eggs. Them I ate.) I lost everything that had felt safe in my life. And all at once. My relationship - and with that a huge chunk of my future. My financial independency - as my partner had asked me to work less, since he was so busy at work. (I know...) And, on top of it all, I had a serious scare with my health, where I got to picture myself spending my last days on this earth sitting on the cliffs of our lovely little paradise island, overlooking the sea, dying in peace. (I can also be dramatic...) I was so frickin' stubborn that I had to learn the hard way that having "everything" is what kept me from not doing anything. That being "safe" is what made me scared. And that all of this was paralyzing me and keeping me from living a life I would die happy from. I had to lose everything in order to find my courage. In order to brake the illusion of safety. And I had to admit to myself, that none of what happened came as a surprise, as my gut had tried to tell me the truth - over and over again.

So stubborn me had no choice but to start respecting the power of the gut and admitting the importance of listening to it. So a few months later I quit what remained the last "safe" thing in my life - my job. I had no idea where exactly I was headed, but I knew where I didn't want to be. It was scary (and exciting) as hell, but my gut told me I would be fine. And then came January 16. Eight months after my previous life had been given to someone else, something in me told me to write those words and publish them. My brain wanted to panic. It kept telling me "But what if your painting does not turn out to be a good enough one? What if you once again choke - as you've done so many times before - and never finish the painting? How embarrassing isn't that: you put it out on FB and then you don't even deliver? Or worse: you put it out on FB and nobody likes it! That's bad... That's even worse!" (The brain can be a picnic of a friend sometimes...) So I heard what my brain said, but I decided not to listen, as listening to my brain had gotten me really nowhere in life, except stagnation and dissatisfaction. Listening to my gut on the other hand, had proven to be a winner. And my gut told me to post. So I did. It was seriously one of the scariest things I had done so far. And one that truly paid off. I found my passion thanks to doing it. That tiny little gesture is what put me on my path. So now I'm hooked. This seriously is a relationship I am never giving up on. My gut and I - together forever.



Megalove,

Carolina