Unraveled (pt. 2)

(Part 2)

A few days ago my friend Steve called me from North Carolina. Steve is probably one of the only people who actually knows everything about me. I don’t lie to Steve or sugarcoat things. I don’t talk around my mistakes or tell stories to make myself look better. With Steve I lay it all out there. Everyone should have a friend like that.

Steve is working at a job he can barely stand, having been forced out of the job that moved him south in the first place. The last few years have been hard and he is finally in a place that allows him to look forward in his life, instead of just getting by. He called to tell me he’s thinking of returning to school which probably would mean moving again and certainly would mean thousands in debt. It could put his already long-distance relationship in a difficult spot and the application process is bound to bring up some past mistakes he’d rather not relive. But it could also mean following a dream and living a better life.

I know this decision must weigh on him and on anyone who is thinking of making a change in the horizon of their future. On the phone he admitted to especially wanting to talk with me because we’ve often chatted up similar dreams in my life. As he said, I would know what it’s like to have big goals; things I want to do – then don’t.

What a strange way to be known to someone, as a person who didn’t do the things she said. And while I would have entered this as further damaging evidence of my unfinished, unraveled lifestyle, for Steve it was somehow a comfort. Hearing me think big or dream big but not always do big, gave him the space he needed to speak this big idea out loud. It gave him room to talk about taking a hard turn and it gave him room to talk about not taking it.

I often avoid the turns. Ninety percent of the time I choose the easy road, the smooth road. I am not particularly taken with the road less traveled by. (It seems to me that if it’s so poetically appealing, more people would be traveling it.) The danger of choosing the easy road over and over again is that somewhere along the way you begin to buy into your own hype. You begin to think that you’re on the easy road because you’re not capable or equipped or called to a more difficult road – a road of potholes and loose stones and road-kill.

But the truth is you just made a choice, then another choice, until you ended up where you’re at. The end of a long road of choices, littered with big dreams and small dreams. Paved over with passion and poetry and past loves.

If you could look back on my road, it’d be easy to see those disregarded exit signs, those plans I made for the life I’d be living if I hadn’t steered clear of the curves. Along the way you’d see the skid-marks and the litter and the laundry, all the baggage I’ve thrown out the windows over the years. But what you’d really be seeing is the road between fear and faith. It’s the junky, bumpy journey that happens between the dreaming and the doing.

Honestly? Yes, I would like to go back and smooth a few things over. If that’s not true for you, then you are the only perfect person I know. But I wouldn’t ever give up the journey, even the parts of it that circle back on itself.

I’m not looking to suddenly turn around and say I’m proud of not finishing things, of being unraveled. But I am proud of being a dreamer. Of being a thinker and a wonderer and sometimes a wanderer. I’m proud of myself for not giving up on me.

So here’s to the ones who don’t give up. To the dreamers and the doers. Here’s to you and me, stuffed in bags beside borrowed couches, waiting for another row to be added, another strand to be woven. We’re unfinished, not quite raveled, but I think I’m okay with that.


(This makes the most sense when you've already read Part 1 - be sure to check that out if you haven't yet!)