My Waterwings

I have a close friend, also a blogger, who unknowingly inspires me on a regular basis.  It is on numerous occasion that she has been a foundation to steady me, an embrace to comfort me and is always available to provide encouragement.  Most recently she has inspired me to start this blog. 
We've shared many words, many stories over the last few years, as we both experience many firsts.  First careers, first promotions, first loves, heartbreaks and heartaches, first seemingly all-encompassing failures...  We share our experiences in an effort to enhance the good, diminish the bad and to learn; to reflect on the outcome of those first bold life choices.  It can be so easy to dive into something you're passionate about but when you falter or fail, that same passion, that flame, can be immediately stamped out (and stamped out with a pair of the best quality heavy, steel-toed boots to kick).  It's always during these times of defeat when we become our most vulnerable.  We can be easily lost to that vulnerability, questionning our choices and before we know it, ourselves.  We lose purpose.

My friend and I have both taken a few plunging nose dives into these passions of ours, as most people do, surfacing with quick reflection and recovery.  After my first few falters though, I seemed to dive into a pool of vulnerability so deep that my second (and third and fourth) attempts at regaining my sense of self sunk me to the bottom of the pool, along with a few hundred tonnes of my own vulnerable baggage.  I spent some time kicking, trying to break the surface and find purpose again but it wasn't long until the vulnerability and the weight started to seem normal, and I stopped kicking.  I succumbed to the fear of the what if -- what if I went after those same aspirations?  Would I make another choice, falter and plunge right back down feeling even more defeated?

So I just floated for a couple of years, letting other peoples choices steer mine, lost in an olympic size pool of what-ifs and don't-want-to-try-and-fail's.  A few months ago it hit me how unfulfilling my life has become at age 24... I made some heart-wrenching choices and forced myself to release some of that weight.  It helped to put my past choices into perspective and I realised how much pressure my own fear had on me;  holding me at the bottom of a dive tank with no oxygen, no goggles and no sexy, shirtless lifeguard jumping in to pull me out and perform Hollywood CPR (aka Baywatch style mouth-to-kiss-me-I'm-yours-happily-never-after)! 

Thankfully, instead of plastic surgery and an aging David Hasselhoff (sorry DH), I have great friends who willingly help me recognize and break down these fears.  Mostly they're fears of failure.  All of which have been brought on by my complete, and ultimately disheartening, absence of self-identity.  After a few misguided choices that didn't turn out the way I projected they would, I lost myself to the ideals of others.  Floating along. 

Recognizing this seemed like a break through and I was sure that I would surface my murky pool and get back on track to the optimistic, passionate self I remember.  It's only now though, months later with no fresh oxygen that I'm realising how much these experiences, these failures, have changed the core of who I am.  And I feel lost again.

My friend wrote a sobering blogpost last week (http://bit.ly/IXsaoU) about honesty and self-acceptance that has given me the courage to start my own blog.  A place where I hope I will be able to focus my constantly wandering indentity and begin to explore my passions again. 

It's taken me some time to blow through my own ego and admit that I'm lost, but now that I have it's beyond liberating.  I now know that this pool is not shallowing anytime soon so I damn-well better adapt and start swimming.  My friends made sure to get me a pair of waterwings though for support -- they're also neon green so that I don't get lost again  ;)