On Starting Over, Part 1
Once you realize you can let go of who you thought you were – that starting over isn’t a loss, but a welcome new beginning – you can make space to become someone new. Someone more like yourself.
This is the first essay in a series on reinvention. Stay tuned for part 2 on Wednesday!
I know that starting over’s not what life’s about
But my thoughts were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth
“The World at Large”, Modest Mouse
The black gravel of the road looked shiny in the rain. I noticed, too, how jagged it looked – I could see the texture because I was at a dead stop, my car parked in the middle of the road. Stuck in traffic on a winding country state highway, I had no idea what happened; I just knew I had all my earthly possessions, including my cat, and I had 10 miles down on my 2,000-mile drive.
It was August 2014, and I was moving to San Diego. The move, a major plot twist after my first year of teaching high school English, felt to me like narrowly escaping a life I wasn’t meant to live. I didn’t like anything about my life that first year of teaching; my pay was shit, I worked all the time, and I felt clueless in the classroom.
So when my boyfriend (who later became my fiancé, and after that, my ex-fiancé) got accepted to law school in San Diego during that grueling first year, I knew I had to go… even if the thought of starting over scared me shitless.
The truth is, I knew right away that I wanted to go. I loved my ex, but I also needed to get out of Missouri. The longing to say FUCK YES LET’S GO and drive into the literal sunset was visceral.
Even though I felt this way, I couldn’t ignore this other pesky part of me that felt unsure. Sure, I knew this was a big decision that I needed to take seriously. But this feeling wasn’t rooted in due diligence. It was the fear of letting go.
Even though I h a t e d 90% of my work and lifestyle during that school year, the pesky part kept poking holes in the idea of moving. It could only view the decision from the POV of having something to lose.
You *just* graduated college and got a degree in your field when there are no teaching jobs. You’re going to give up everything you worked for?
You busted your ass to get this job, especially since teaching jobs are so hard to get right now. You’re going to just give up everything you worked for?
Your friends and family are here! Who will you know out there?
All of these questions seemed legitimate on the surface, and to a point, they were.
What I couldn’t see then was that all these thoughts had roots in a shared faulty belief: my external environment shapes my identity, and without this environment, my identity will disappear. It wasn’t my accomplishments, relationships, or career I was worried about losing. It was my sense of self.
For as much as we glamorize starting over in our societal stories, the truth is it’s fucking scary and hard. Starting over requires us to let go of who we thought we were, forcing us to float along without a sense of mooring in who we are.
But we were only anchored to the identity we had to begin with because we made the mistake of thinking our identities are fixed, static states. The truth is identities are inherently dynamic; we crave change, growth, and expansion, both in the material realm and within our inner worlds.
When we refuse to start over by holding on to old identities, we rob ourselves of the human need to stretch ourselves and embody our potential. For many people, this is energetically what’s happening when you feel “stuck”. There’s a part of you that longs for a new beginning that you’re too scared to acknowledge, so instead you say things like “I could never do [thing you want to do]” and talk yourself out of trying.
The irony of being afraid to lose yourself or “what you’ve built” is that walking away from those things would get you closer to your authentic self. My consideration of staying in a job I hated because “I’d worked so hard for it” was asinine. I didn’t like 90% of my day in this lifestyle, yet because I worked for it, I should want it? I mean, wut???
The fear of starting over assumes that your core identity can somehow be lost, but when you start over, you’re not losing anything essential to who you are. Your core identity is not based on what you do for a living or who you associate with. It’s about your values, desires, and passions. It’s something that resides within you, and changing your external reality can only make expressing and embodying that identity easier or harder.
Once you understand your identity begins within you, not outside of you, you establish grounding within yourself. You realize you can let go of who you thought you were – that starting over isn’t a loss, but a welcome new beginning. You can make space to become someone new. Someone more like yourself.
The version of me stuck in traffic en route to her new life in San Diego knew she made the right decision, but battled so much confusion, heartache, and fear in the process.
All through Kansas, she cried and listened to sad country music on local radio stations. By Texas, shaken out of her thoughts by a terrifying wind storm, she made it to Amarillo to sleep.
But the sun of a new day in a strange place brightened her spirits, and by the time she reached the desert of New Mexico, the momentum of the moment was building.
The lush green forests of Northern Arizona greeted her with the most delicious air. The Saguaros waved and welcomed her.
By the time she found herself under the southern California stars, her connection to hope overwhelmed her capacity for fear. She relaxed, opening to the possibilities as expansive as the open sky. She let go. She started over.