Expectations

I have realized something. It is surprising that it has taken me so long to realize it. It was an “ah-ha” moment combined with an “Oh DUH!” moment.  I have realized that up ‘til now I have been living my life according to the expectations of others. I thought that they were the expectations I had for myself but it was just an optical illusion. A cursory glance would show that they were my own. But once I gave it a second, more thorough look I discovered that they were not really mine at all. Like that picture where one minute you swear it’s a rabbit but then the next it is a duck. These expectations have ruled my life for so long and I have thought I wanted them so much that I have pretty much spent my whole life focused on them without taking the time to really think about them. I am 26 years old and I expected my life to be so different than what it is. I expected to be married. I expected to have kids. I expected to have an awesome career that uses the degree I worked so hard to get. I expected to be out of Augusta. I expected to be financially secure. I expected to own my own home. I expected to have traveled the world. I expected…expected…expected…expected…

Now, do not get me wrong. I still want all of those things…eventually. What I am learning is that Life is unexpected and when you have expectations a lot of the time Life just looks at you and laughs. Expectation runs on a tight schedule. All of my expectations have had to do with some arbitrary sense of a time table for my life. I have to be married by X age or else there must be something wrong with me. If you date a guy for X number of years and he hasn't proposed then don’t ever expect he will. I must have kids before I turn X years old. I must have kids period. These are all restrictions that expectation have put on my life and as a result I have made myself feel miserable about the life I lead. I am not married. I don’t have kids. I don’t have my dream career. I am not out of Augusta. I am not 100% financially secure. I don’t own my own home. I have not traveled the world. And this has made me feel incredibly dissatisfied with the life I have led up til now. Then I discovered a wonderful word that makes me feel loads better and blew the limiting expectations out of the water…YET…such a small word to be so liberating. I have YET to accomplish all that I want to accomplish in my life but guess what? I am not dead YET. I still have so much time to accomplish all those things that it is crazy! 26 is still really young! Screw you expectations! I now wish to refer to those expectations as dreams or goals because I feel like they are more fluid and they don’t have a due date.

So, all that being said, I want to address the part where I said that I believe that these expectations were not my own. I am not trying to pass the buck of responsibility because I definitely find myself culpable but at the same time there are other culprits. The biggest offenders are the ones that love me the most: my family and my friends. I am sorry to say but I think that you are as much to blame as I am. Many of you have projected these expectations onto my life because you believed that they were what was right for me. You also believed that they were what I wanted. It was a crime of passion. You felt so passionately for me and want me to be happy that you aided my cycle of expectation. And so because of your part in this crime I have a couple things to say to you. Firstly, thank you. Thank you for loving me so much that you want only the best for me and for me to be happy. You were misguided in what you thought that was but the misdirection was my fault and I am sorry for misleading you. Secondly, I would like to say that I appreciate all of your advice and opinions on the subject of my life, BUT sometimes it is ok to just sit back and shut-up. I say that with all the love in my heart and with no disrespect. There are just sometimes when what you think is helpful advice is actual more harmful. I have so many people who care about me that there is a constant swirl of voices in my head trying to tell me the direction I need to go. The problem is that over time those voices have drowned out the most important voice: my own. So, I thank you for your love and support but for now I think I’ve got this on my own for a while. I realize that I need to get retuned to hear my own voice and drown out all the other noise. Don’t worry though. I still value your opinion and I most certainly will ask for it if I feel the need.

I now move on to my own crimes. First, I want to address the crime of forcing these expectations on myself. I really should have done a better job at listening to what was right for me instead of listening to the expectations of others. I could have been on the road to recovery a long time ago were it not for my passivity in figuring out what I want. Second, I also want to bring to light the fact that I punish myself for not meeting these expectations. I beat myself up over and over again, telling myself that I am good for nothing because I have not accomplished these things. That behavior is unacceptable and it needs to stop right now.

My third crime is by far my biggest. I am an expectations perpetuator. By that I mean that not only did I enforce these ridiculous expectations in my own life but I projected them onto others. Mainly, I am talking about my boyfriend Michael. He has been the main victim outside of myself that has suffered the consequences of these expectations.  For this, I am deeply sorry. We have been dating for five years and I thought that it meant something that he has not proposed to me. I figured that he should know by now whether or not he wants me. Some have said that a guy knows instantly if he wants to marry a girl. Others have said that he will know for sure after a year, or two years. Here’s the thing: everyone is different! Just because your husband proposed to you after a month of dating that does not mean that that is what is right for others. For crying out loud Carrie and Big dated for 10 years before they got hitched! But, I bought into the expectation and as a result I became deeply unhappy with myself and Michael. I even became a little resentful towards him. I see now that all that resentment and self-loathing were products of the expectations that I had adopted and projected onto our relationship. Just because we are not engaged it does not mean that he does not love me and that it is never going to happen. It means that it is what it is and that is ok. You are not me and your relationship is not ours. No one knows what is between us except us. Growing up, I always wanted a fairy tale love story a la Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. But you know what, I don’t want a fairy tale anymore. I want my own story full of ups and downs, triumphs and heartbreaks. I would not trade our love story for anything. Even if we don’t get a happy ending. The beauty of it is that we don’t know the ending to our story. It has YET to happen. For right now, I am going to work on Mary Beth, he is going to work on Michael, and we are going to work on us. I love him and he loves me and that is enough.

So all that being said, I am letting go of all expectations. I don’t have to know what is going to happen down the road or when it is going to happen. And I don’t want to know. I am going to let the future worry about the future and the past worry about the past because I want to live in the present and begin living my life to it’s fullest in the here and now. I don’t want to be anything other than happy.