The Next Steps

When I was a teenager, I think my family thought I was crazy. Looking at me with pause as I’d go on about my wide-eyed dreams, about moving away from our small town and building a life in a big city. Whenever we gathered for holidays or birthdays, I’d jabber on about how I wanted to leave Michigan and try living in New York City and Los Angeles. And by some twists of luck and surprise resolve, I did almost exactly that. Only instead I traded those cities for San Diego and Chicago. And it was so, so much more than I could have imagined.

But when dad got sick, there was no choice, no hesitation and absolutely no regret – I had to come home. He was the thread I needed to weave my life around, to be there for him and our family, and to bring comfort to myself by doing the only thing I could, be home. Life as I knew it, or wanted it, had to stop for a while – and it still hasn’t completely righted itself since.

I was always very decisive about what I wanted my future to be. I knew I’d move, and travel, and succeed. I always saw that future, and was resolute in creating it. But now things aren’t so clear. I look to the future and don’t see it looking back at me.

Just before dad’s diagnosis, I’d felt the wear from years out-pacing what I’d known growing up on a quiet island just south of Detroit. And in my heart – felt Michigan is where I’d finally put down those forever roots. Maybe start a family, and spend my remaining years in the company of the one I’d always known. But now I’m not so sure.

This past weekend, I went back to Chicago to visit – and it was like stepping back in time. Remembering what life was and could be before cancer changed everything. Being the girl I was before grief muffled much of her joy. It was liberating in the recognition that life could still be what I make it.

I’m still not sure what I want, but I think I have a greater awareness that maybe it’s looking different than what I imagined for so long. And that it’s OK to get back to living life for me, whatever that is.

All I know is that the most beautiful and tragic thing about life, is that anything can happen – which is both exciting and scary in its promise. All we can do, is surrender to the idea that it will.