My Life of Something More

I've used good food, bad food, health food, sweet food, fat food, lean food, fried food, broiled food, baked this, lightly dressed that and more. I've tried light yoga, relentless crossfit, knee-splintered running and sweat-drenched yoga. I've been a size 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14.

I've worn tight clothes, short clothes, big clothes, long clothes, bright clothes, dark clothes, high heels, low heels, no heels, tennis shoes, short socks, ankle socks and toe socks.

I've bought new phones, old phones, laptops, desktops, bright lamps, wall paint, old china, new glasses, fancy sheets, smell-good soap and teeth whitener.

I've worked as an editor, copyeditor, copywriter, proofreader, book researcher, algorithm tester, content manager, marketing consultant and self-publisher.

I've dated doctors, lawyers, soldiers, pilots, accountants, CEOs and one really phenomenal, heart-stealing love-of-my-life hunk. 

And for all these things that I used, tried, worn, bought and dated, nothing--absolutely nothing--ever helped me bliss out from the life I lived. There was always one more thing to try, and one more thing to buy and one more person I just hadn't met yet.

There must be something missing, there must be something more out there.

This is what I told myself even as I swirled in the nauseous commotion that was my Life of Something More. 

That is, until one day, when I was invited to do something I'd never thought of before:

I woke up.

I began to see the piles of recycled food rules; the obsessive exercise regimes; the loads (upon loads) of clothes I've worn once and discarded; the overpriced technology that no one can reasonably afford to update every six months; the endless pile of soul-crushing work; and the merciless human experiment that is "adult dating" in the 21st century.

Slowly, as I woke up, I began to take myself back. I began to invite my life to come alive here, now, without anything extra.

The extras, however, don't go away overnight. It turns out that in the swirl of more more more because I am not not not worthy, I got hooked on the good and bad things because they helped me sleep through the misery. They helped me get away faster and stay asleep longer, but never forever. There was always a time when I had to re-emerge and look at the messiness of my life and decide if I was divinely inspired or just royally screwed.

But something curious happens when we try to see with eyes full of clarity: they show up to help us along. And I recognized that I'm somewhere in the middle like everyone else: both a miraculous human offering and a teeter-totter of hiccups and scrapes. And unless I choose to look at the wonderful, the tragic and all the normal stuff in between, I will never see anything at all.