life is about making sacrifices. if you want to bring in a million dollars a year and have a great relationship with your significant other. you probably can’t have work-life balance and attend all the social events you want to. instead of lazy sunday mornings in bed, you probably need to work after-hours, deal with debilitating stress and find a way to not let it consume you despite it.
you can’t expect to have everything you want from life without making sacrifices. you can’t expect outlier outputs from non-outlier efforts. life is about trade-offs. you can’t just want the result, and not the process. life is about making sacrifices.
a big sacrifice i made was leaving my life in new york: a life of stability and safety. i spent my entire life dreaming being in new york before falling out of love with it. it is true i left new york for bigger dreams, but it is also true that new york was once all that i wanted.
it was once my entire world, but it was a world i had to slowly let go of to make space for the life i wanted to have. letting go meant saying no. no meant uncertainty, isolation, and longer working hours. no meant a life oceans away from my friends.
over a year since the move, i have slowly started to plant roots in the bay. with it, i found stillness, tenderness and a sense of belonging. alignment and assurance, even amid what feels like a never-ending-blazingly-hot environment.
i have become a quite different person from the person i was two years ago. it is true that the version of myself who once found joy wandering around williamsburg on saturday mornings no longer exists. but sometimes i think about her.
the reason why the movie past lives struck such a chord with me is because i have spent much of my life leaving. for the better. always for the better.
the girl you are looking for no longer exists, but just because she no longer exists, doesn’t meant she wasn’t real
i have lived so many lives. from jakarta, to los angeles, new york and now the bay area. each move was always accompanied by a transformation. a sense that it is for the better. even within each city, there were so many chapters. each one replete with sacrifice and loss. all i really know is how to leave, although leaving gets tiring.
when i was living back with my parents last summer, i found myself having dinner across the table with friends i felt i could not recognize. clashing perspectives on what it means to be happy. how to find love. how to care. what it means to be a woman. a split between the person i have become, and the person i would have been if i had stayed.
but you were supposed to be my forever and ever. my constant through the ever-changing seasons.
growing apart is a consequence of growing. there is the quote that says most people are supposed to be in your life for a season. but even the ones that feel permanent won’t stay forever. it isn’t personal, it is just part of life. you shouldn’t get attached. attachment is the source of suffering.
i know all of this but yet i still try to find my way around it. as if i could compensate for the grief. the grief will always live inside of me. the grief for the lives i could’ve had. the lives i had to let go of.
you were once my entire life and all that i wanted. saying goodbye hurt so i try and make the pain mean something. if not, what was it all for? i always say if i could’ve chosen differently i would’ve. but if i had stayed i wouldn’t be me. because i am someone who leaves.