You can't chase a new dream without some amount of reflection on why you had to find a new one in the first place. You can't just move on without conducting a thorough autopsy on the old dream first. As excited as I was about seeing Europe and looking at real estate, I couldn't entirely shake the hit my confidence had taken during the past several years. While I looked bold and brave from the outside, on the inside, I was unsure of my ability to dream this dream, and even less sure of being able to withstand the blow of not realizing one again.
As I looked at one property after another, visited one war monument after another, stood in awe of one breathtaking view after another, I couldn't help but feel like I was in a dream rather than chasing one. What made me think that I could build a bed and breakfast in a foreign country when I couldn't even build a marriage on familiar ground? The beauty and excitement surrounding me in this part of Europe came in and out of focus as self-doubt and my financial reality crashed head-on with my dream. Was my do-over doomed?
The quiet serenity of the landscape, the long travel periods and my empty house in the States gave me ample time for thought; perhaps far too ample. As I struggled with attracting clients for my business and juggled my shrinking income in a worsening economic climate, I wondered how I would ever be able to survive anywhere in the world, let alone someplace where I lost money in the conversion from the U.S. Dollar to the Euro. When I returned from my first trip abroad, I had only two months left before I would need to have every worldly possession I owned and whatever dignity I had left packed and removed from the premises. The whole idea was emotionally overwhelming.
I faced a daily struggle with holding myself level -- keeping a realistic perspective on the occasional high hopes I felt while trying to stop myself from falling too deep into the depression that I had been battling for so long. I had to keep an even keel or risk being drowned. So, I prayed a lot. I also cried a lot. Mostly, I gave myself several "pep talks" in an effort to "keep my chin up" because "the game's not over" and "I still had time to win." Years after playing myriad sports, lessons learned from being a competitor were starting to pay off. In fact, my extremely competitive nature is probably what keeps me getting out of bed every morning and getting through yet another day. Well, that combined with the power of prayer and the most wonderful family and friends in the world.
I often wonder how people who are virtually alone in their lives ever survive. How do they move from one day to the next without the constant support from people who love them? While I felt completely and utterly lost and alone during the deepest moments of my depression, I always knew I wasn't really alone in this world. I chose to deal with my sadness on my own, not wanting to burden others with it. My depression was far too personal and I buried it like a toxic substance. But at the same time, the very presence of family and friends made my life bearable and gave me hope. It's true that you never really know who your friends are until you're at your most desperate. I found out just how many true friends I have. And family? Well, they say you can pick your friends but you're stuck with your family. I can say that I would pick my family to be my friends. How lucky I am.
A few years ago, I was discussing family with a friend who was an inspiration to me. She was a strong, independent woman who had been very successful in her professional life and a tremendous community leader. She had never married or had children. Now that she was getting older and had lost most of her vision, she was planning to move to another state to live with a nephew and his wife. Why there? She told me they were the only relatives she had left. I shook my head and stared off into the distance when she told me this, trying to wrap my brain around the concept. Besides having five brothers and sisters, I had tons of nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and cousins. It would take the complete annihilation of the Earth to leave me without family who would take me in. How very lucky I am.
I have to admit that I never even came close to actually being homeless after my divorce. My Mom and Dad would have loved having me back home. Brothers and sisters offered me a roof over my head as did several of my incredibly generous friends. It was my world-traveler friend who made the winning offer because she has two houses and splits her time between them. I could live in the spare room at her house in town and since she spent much of her time at her farmhouse, we wouldn't drive each other crazy. She joked that she owed me at least that for introducing me to the Running Man in the first place saying, "I don't know if you'll thank me for that someday or kill me for it." I was grateful -- for the introduction and for the accommodations.
Life is truly strange. I'd had mine all figured out, living in a huge, beautiful house and building a dream. All of the sudden, my life was split between a 10' x 20' storage unit and an even smaller guestroom where I was surrounded by boxes containing the sum total of my life. And I had nothing figured out except for the fact that you never really do have anything figured out.
I would spend the next few months completing that autopsy on my first dream before pronouncing it dead and burying it with my other toxic substances. And it would take every ounce of confidence I could muster to reach out and try to catch some new dream by the tail. But I was willing to try.
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