If we stopped to think about how life works, I don’t know if we’d actually want to live it. It’s almost funny how one small decision can completely change everything around you and the way you see things. One day, you believe that everything around you has finally settled, that you’ve found the peace you’ve been looking for and dreaming about, but that’s where the problem lies: everything that stays peaceful for too long eventually falls apart. I honestly don’t know why things work this way, but I remember that four months ago, I was so certain of what my life would look like that if I could see myself today, I would probably think it was some kind of joke. One day, you have your entire professional life mapped out by your mentors, you believe that this is truly what you want for your future, you have someone you believe is the love of your life, you have friends who seem to care about you, and a mind so full that there is no room for anxiety or overthinking to settle in. What you don’t know is that none of it was anything more than a temporary illusion.
Today, if we try to be rational about my situation, it’s actually quite depressing. For someone who used to have so many certainties, and now has nothing left but questions that seem to multiply every day, everything starts to feel like an episode of The Office. Sometimes I find myself looking for the hidden camera as if I were in The Truman Show, but I can’t understand why anyone would want to watch my sad and pathetic life, so I quickly dismiss the thought. It’s funny how expectations work and how they shape the world around us. If I were to analyze every one of my relationships over the past four months, none of it would make sense, and I would realize that everything that once seemed beautiful and perfect was simply a veil created by my expectations. How can you suffer over someone who forgot they had plans with you? What is the point of crying over someone who, when you shared an insecurity with them, chose to end things instead of helping you through it? Nothing in life makes much sense when you look at it too closely.
But if we start talking about life, we’d never finish this letter. When it comes to my choices, nothing makes sense at first, and it’s almost funny how pathetic we look when we try to understand why something is happening to us. I say that from experience. I don’t know if you’re religious, but at some point in your life, you’ve probably found yourself praying to a God, whoever that may be, begging Him to explain why this was happening to you. After all, you’ve never done anything to anyone, so how could it make sense that you were going through such “punishment”? No one likes spending sleepless nights revisiting their past or being unable to get out of the car because they can’t stop crying, the kind of crying that leaves you gasping for air and makes your chest ache. In the end, no one really understands anything that happens to us, but if we look closely at the chain of decisions we’ve made and how we ended up here, somehow, it all becomes almost laughable.
After all, who would have thought that leaving my job, ending a relationship I swore was amazing but was clearly terrible, realizing that some relationships in my life aren’t meant to last, that not everyone who shares my life will stay forever, would leave me with my bags packed, ready to move to another country? How do I explain to myself that the entire domino effect began when I decided to quit my job, and that from that moment on, I truly felt as though I had finally started living the life I had asked for?
In the end, decisions are awful to make. Some seem easier or feel more natural, almost like intuition, but in the end, the most important decisions I’ve ever made were the ones that scared me—the ones that kept me awake at night, wondering if I’d completely lost my mind. They were the decisions that made me listen to my parents telling me I was crazy and that none of it made any sense. The important thing to remember is that, in the end, everything has to make sense to the person living it. My decisions don’t affect anyone else’s life. In the end, I’m the one who will have to live with the consequences. So why should I deprive myself of the extraordinary? I can’t guarantee that the decisions that scare you the most are the ones that will change your future, but I like to hold on to that hope.
To no One,
Cora Vesper.