I've been here before dealing with exactly everything I am dealing with these days. I don't know that accepting you won't see someone ever again gets easier but perhaps gratitude for everything you lived with them comes in abundance. Along with many other feelings. Last time I was surviving an existential crisis I was in therapy trying to decipher all I had lived and had made me the way I was. I remember sitting across from my therapist asking her "what am I really here to do in this lifetime?" A question that haunted me for a very long time since at the time nothing in my career seemed to be going my way. I wanted answers and I was in a lot of pain as life began to show me it was in control and I began to accept it. In the span of two years and in the midst of my first ever existential crisis my grandfather, first therapist, and first agent passed. I remember feeling like I couldn't live anymore and would never get past those feelings. In that lies the answer to surviving my current existential crisis. Those feelings did come to pass and when the time was right I got up, got out of bed and lived again with the same passion I once had before.
The one thing I have now that I didn't have back then when I was twenty-seven is awareness. Awareness that I can choose to not be a victim of my circumstance and to enjoy the ride while also allowing myself to feel everything I am feeling. With my father's passing it has been quite different than Neil's and to be honest it's timing did suck. I was just getting over the hump and accepting Neil's non-existence in human form when I got the call about my father. While I was extremely sad as well I had a very different reaction since like I said before, I truly believe my dad is finally at peace. A peace living could not afford him. With Neil, well he loved living and was so good at it that his passing was very sad and frightening. All of us left behind to grieve can do one of two things, we can shut down and pretend everything is okay, which I am witnessing some people do, or we can make our way out of it. If life has taught me anything it is that the only way out of something is by going through it or as I like to say GROWING through it. ;-)
These constant reminders that I am on borrowed time and that I truly have no idea what today will bring make me LIVE. I choose happiness in spite of all I am growing through right now because I realize one day I won't have choices. I choose to give today my all even when it's not the my all I am used to because again one day I won't get to give my all. My crisis this time has a different feel to it. A sense of peace comes with it because there's so much more acceptance. Seven years have passed since my last one and I have grown into such a different person. Don't get me wrong I am still human and I still fear ceasing to exist before I feel I have LIVED all I want to but I know that I have no control over that and all I truly have control over is what I do today to live my way into my dreams. Acceptance of what is not what I wish was plays a big part in feeling peace. When fear creeps in trying to make me feel terrified at the thought of being gone sooner than I'd like I can hear myself going, "I have no control over that". Something I know I was barely learning last time around.
I speak openly of this because I can only imagine what all of Neil's friends were feeling when he passed. All like him young with precious families all of sudden thrust into a fear that like him they could leave sooner than they ever dreamt. I think that is what makes people not know what to say to you when you loose someone dear. I don't think it's not only not knowing what to say but you have also brought them a reminder that something we all feel can not or will not happen to us will. Yet all I see, even as people tell me I have bad luck or poor Adriana so much is happening to her etc., is life happening on it's terms and God reminding me I am right in following my heart.
It simply is a reminder that life is too short to do anything other than what your heart asks of you even if that means, for me at least, enduring this current detour that has lead me on a road I did not envision at all. This was not how I envisioned 2011 kicking off. However if I allow my awareness to be present than I can recall how I also did not envision 2008 to be kicked off by being dumped for being who I am two days before Valentine's only to find that the detour and the road it led me on had me within three months shooting a film on my favorite author's work, and within another three I won an international film competition for that film and three months after that I met the author of the novel. So within nine months of a rocky start to a year and having life give me a detour, as this man had told me the week before he loved me and could see himself starting a family with me, my awareness allowed me to be grateful for being able to take the road less traveled.
That is all I see happening again. It has been said that "Rejection is God's protection" and I solely believe that because I have lived it. If it is in my best interest to succeed with my morals and principals intact than along the way I will be detouring a lot as life will take care of showing me people for who they really are as it did last week. Timing again perhaps didn't seem like the best and that is why people find themselves uttering the words poor Adriana look at all she is going through. All I can say to that is don't poor me. I am living in spite of all of that and as I see it because of all that. If I didn't have these "challenges" sent my way and I was just doing anything to get by instead of living my way into my dream and the answers, than yeah poor Adriana life is going to pass her by she is going to wake up and realize she didn't follow her heart but if you know me you know that is far from the truth. So please don't feel bad for me. Send me love but don't pity me. I am living as best as I can taking it one day at a time. Sometimes one hour at a time. ;-) Like Jen Marie tells me, "you have lived more already than some people do in a lifetime."
Stick around, watch me muddle my way through this existential crisis and perhaps stumble more than I care too but have no doubt I was born to stand. I was born to stand for all my heart longs to know and I won't stop until I am asked to. That is all that is happening right now. A not so gentle reminder to continue on even if the people traveling the road with me are a lot less than when I began. I trust that I have lots of living yet to do and I trust that timing while it may seem off to me is probably fine tuning itself to allow me to arrive into the what next not a minute too soon or a minute to late. Just on time, God's time, because as I believe if we arrive too early by our own will forcing things to happen when we want on our terms, that is when we suffer, for organic will doesn't happen without the help of a universal conspiracy and a lot of hard work on my end. In my book at least since I co-write the chapters. ;-)
Until that moment comes on its own I encourage you to fall apart, surround yourself with people who can just hold you while you sob, make you smile when you don't think you can, laugh when it feels wrong to- laugh through the guilt, listen to you and before you know it one day like that fateful day for me in the fall of 05' after a summer in bed morning the loss of my grandfather, you will wake with a genuine love for life again. You will see the sun in all its glory, you will love again, you will move beyond fear into the what next trusting that the time has come to live again.
I write this inspired to but most of all hoping that you, whoever you may be, is meant to stumble upon this will come to see that while we may feel alone as we survive an existential crisis we are together in that feeling too which means you can't be alone after all. ;-) Perhaps I write this to remind myself where I have been and how far I've come and that it is okay to be where I am today. Most of all I believe life is telling me that while so much appears to the eye to be heading down a road leading nowhere I know better. I know I am not traveling towards a dead end. I am going to meet my destiny, so the road on the way there won't have many travelers as it's a road being paved just for me with detours that have seen many decide to take a different road. For that I am grateful because as I've said before I don't mind people not believing in my dream or my beliefs but under no circumstance will I tolerate anyone standing in the way of them. And that is all I believe life to be showing me through all I am living lately, it's too short to stop now. I've come too far and when I let go, truly let go and allow myself to be led I will go exactly where I am meant to make the most of my existence and learn from the teachers life is sending on this journey and perhaps be a teacher to. I will survive this existence in question and find great comfort in the proof that I am not alone as David O' Russell film based on his own existential crisis proves. To existence and all the beauty its mystery provides. I've got falling apart and most of all LIVING to do while allowing the chapters of this book called life to be written into existence. ;-)
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