July 15, 2006

Becoming Capable of Change
by Mae

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On April 17, 2001, I climbed into a Volvo packed with all my essential belongings and began a 661-mile journey from Georgia, Vermont to LeRoy, Ohio to start a new life with my fiancé, Peter.

As I drove over the bridge from Vermont to New York, tears streamed down my face. I was leaving behind the life I’d known since I was 11, and my heart was breaking. In some ways, it would have been so easy then to just turn around and abandon the absurd notion that I was strong enough to start a new and uncertain life far from the place I called home.

But, it also would have been incredibly hard to turn back. Instead, I looked down at the laminated motivational phrases I’d taped all over the dashboard—“This Is The Adventure,” “I Am Responsible For My Own Happiness,” “Every Good Friend Was Once A Stranger”—and kept going.

I guess I’ve been going ever since, although it certainly wasn’t easy at first.

The first few weeks in Ohio, I walked around in a kind of daze, unable to believe that I’d actually had the guts to extricate myself from my former life. I was exhausted. It seemed I’d used up all the energy I ever would have to do hard or challenging things, and therefore my new life could only be one of taking the easy way out.

But I was wrong.

Instead, after having done something so incredibly hard, I found that most of the challenges I now faced simply paled in comparison. If I’d had the courage to leave behind my job, family, and friends, surely I could find the strength to try out a roller-coaster ride or take my first plane trip.

I still remember the day when I realized, in a flash of insight, that from that moment onward I no longer could legitimately view any challenge as too hard to overcome. I’d done the hardest thing there was to do, so I had no “excuses” or “reasons” left not to overcome lesser challenges.

In some ways, it’s like jogging. Once you jog for, say, 20 minutes, then ever-after you know that you’re capable of at least that. Even if you feel like you’re dying at 15 minutes, there’s that voice of truth inside your head that says, “But, you have jogged for 20 minutes before; you’re capable of it so stop saying you can’t.”

This was a powerful insight, and I do feel it fundamentally changed part of who I am as a person. I’d proven to myself that I could be strong, that I could push through seemingly impossible challenges, and so a whole world opened up to me.

Five years later, I’m happily married with a good job, a pleasant life in the suburbs of New York City, and there’s a part of me that is still breathless with incredulity that I actually did it—I created an adult life for myself by taking the empowerment I gained that day in April and letting the momentum carry me through to sunnier days.

It wasn’t easy, of course; that’s the point. The post-move challenges I faced may have paled in comparison to that first leap of faith, but they were at times nonetheless gut-wrenching and incredibly painful. They were also transformative. I was turned inside out, forced to confront old demons and re-examine what I really believed. But I fought through all of it because I knew that I could. Self-doubt, in its truest, harshest form had already been slain.

The struggle continues today, of course. I haven’t overcome every challenge, and I never will. There are simply too many. But I’ve learned that I can overcome, so any challenge I decide to take on doesn’t stand a chance when all said and done. Life’s a journey, and the process of traveling it is a continuing process of re-inventing oneself; sometimes a little bit at a time, sometimes a lot at a time.

I wonder if I’ll recognize myself five years from now?