Turning the pages

Dear friends, I’m feeling pensive tonight.

Perhaps it’s the rapidly descending chill that’s keeping me up, or the giant triple soy cap I had this morning which is still humming through my veins, but I’m going through old, old emails and just - thinking.

When I was a child, I read Choose Your Own Adventure books – do you remember those? The obviously schizophrenic author would tell you a story, and give you a choice. Based on that decision, you would have a page to turn to and you would read another section of the story and make another decision. Eventually you arrived at one of many endings available in the book.

I must confess: I don’t think I ever read one the way it was meant to be read. I would flip through, find an ending I liked, and work my way backwards til I could create a story the way I wanted it to exist. Even at the tender age of five, I searched for that happy ending.

And I wanted a guarantee that would take me there.

Growing up, I found it hard to accept that in life, a happy ending isn’t something you can plan at the beginning and race towards with full speed. Those of us without crystal balls muddle through, wondering what paths we’re supposed to take and whether certainty is a product of insight or blind trust.

At times, I’ve felt like I’ve been stuck on the same page for a very, very long time. Paralysed by uncertainty? Plagued by self-doubt and a lack of insight? Or simply unable to let go and move on?

I’ve never really been very good at letting go and moving on. I want to be – oh, how I’ve longed for the ability to do it cleanly and quickly the way some people can; to logically pack up and move on with maturity and grace and dignity and a thousand other things which, at the time, seem terribly difficult and untouchable and further removed from the realms of my ability than flying to the moon or swallowing fire or walking on water. I’ve tried to force, hurry, trick and distract myself into letting go (I know my workplace at least is grateful for this, as are ballet schools, Latin studios, cafes, restaurants, liquor stores, clothing outlets and a random art shop where I bought scrapbooking supplies in an effort to stay busy). I’ve pretended I’m already there, already over it, a kind of “fake it til you make it” exercise.

But eventually, honesty returns, and there’s no fooling yourself when it comes crashing down around you.

It’s funny how when you’re in the moment, there’s nothing that seems more endless or more important. Pain, love, laughter, anger – all overpowering, all eternal. Surely we will never recover. Surely we will never forget, never let go, never stop feeling this way. And yet, as I read back through emotional chapters of the last few years, I realise with a jolt that there are things – painful things, fraught with emotion and confusion, things that I was sure would kill me with their absolute anguish – that eventually healed, leaving only the tiniest of marks.

Occasionally I could feel it the moment in which it happened; a conversation, a word, a glance in which I felt something deep inside me shift and let go. But more often than not, slowly and almost imperceptibly, the agony of all-consuming grief faded to a distant ache, a shadow on the horizon. And then almost accidentally, as I forgot the details, the event that had so distressed me or the person who had thrown me into fits of tormented suffering quietly became just another memory. And finally it became just another part of the rich tapestry of a full life.

What I’ve come to realise is that certainty is a transient luxury; that forever requires commitment and determination and dedication. What you thought you were supposed to be doing is one of many potential paths your life can take. And while you certainly get to choose the kind of story you want to live, there’s no way to flip to the back of the book, choose the ending and plot backwards. As self-evident as it may seem, the only way to read the book is forwards – to make the best decision you can with the information you have, and see where it takes you.

And golly, you will make mistakes, and you will hurt others, and be hurt in turn. There will be times you’re sure you can never recover, when you weep into your pillow (or, like me, onto Steph) and swear at the world and wonder if you were cursed at birth. But time is a true healer, your forgetful memory at times your best friend, and what we shouldn’t do and can’t do and will not do is to allow our fear of the ending to keep us from making decisions. It’s the only way, I feel, to create an interesting story.