Welcome to Side Two

When we flip the mix tape of our life over to side two, we are done being the version of who people told us we should be. We begin to find a way to trust ourselves; we begin to find our truest selves. If we spent side one looking to someone else to answer the big questions, side two is where others look to us for the answers.

There is this inherent need in the psyche of human beings to mark their transitions, the shifts of our universe. This Southern California late June sunset was the last sunset of my side one. The sunrise of the following morning was the beginning of my side two.

After about six straight months of a string of profound disappointments, crises, and of life-altering grief, the storm seems to have mostly stopped. What truly amazed me in the past weeks is that whenever I felt I was getting too far out into the water, there was always an unexpected piece of driftwood for me to hold onto, a kind person to reach out to me, more grace to sustain me. Of all the times life has taken me to that place of feeling like I might drown, I'm not sure if I realized how much that grace was there with me.

In my experience, when the universe hands me a crisis, it is giving me an opportunity to let go of something, or to let go of someone. After not having the chance to write for six months, and after my life seems to have re-wired itself, I felt this need to walk across Highway One, and to stand at the edge of the ocean, because this seemed like a place where a person would begin again.

We can spend so much of our younger days trying to be enough for everyone's expectations, but what I really want is not having to keep up. In my Gen X school days, when the last week would come before summer break, the teacher would take down the images on the bulletin boards and nothing was left but a few staples and the remnants of colored paper like leaves from the seasons that we had just weathered. I would get this feeling of relief that I had nothing else to prove, because the year was over, that I no longer had to be cool enough or smart enough - and that I could just be myself for a while.

I have reached this place where I am gradually able to let go of what I thought should be. I've been saying the few, simple lines of the serenity prayer at night. The fuller, original version of this prayer looks as if the writer had skimmed centuries of wisdom from all the major religions of the world. It's a profound enough prayer to be part of the foundation of 12-step programs.

I am realizing that the courage to change the things that I can has been a force in me all along, it's just much bigger now. It's as fierce as any crisis that I have lived through. It helps me to say what needs to be said in the moment and somehow even helps me learn to listen more. And when I have spoken my peace and someone does not listen in return, this is my cue to just peacefully walk away. I have learned in these past months to take life one day, and even one hour, at a time. I am learning to accept the things I cannot change when I have tried for many years and decades to change them.

I am now on side two. 

(c) 2018 - writing and photos by Chloe Koffas