At 32, I got divorced and started over.
I genuinely thought that was going to be my big starting-over story.
You know the one.
Woman leaves old life. Finds herself. Builds better life. Becomes inspirational Facebook quote.
Except apparently life had several more fucking drafts planned.
Because starting over did not happen once.
It happened again.
And again.
Different houses.
Different jobs.
Different relationships.
Different plans.
Different versions of me.
Sometimes because I made the decision.
Sometimes because somebody else did.
Sometimes because life looked at everything I had carefully put together and said, yeah, we're not fucking doing that anymore.
There is something very misleading about the phrase starting over.
It sounds clean.
Almost hopeful.
Like you pack a few boxes, throw out the things that remind you of your old life, buy a cute planner, and begin again with better boundaries.
That has not been my experience.
Starting over is usually ugly.
It is standing in a room surrounded by your shit trying to figure out what you can keep.
It is doing math you already know is not going to work.
It is wondering where you are going to live.
How you are going to pay for things.
Whether you made the right decision.
Whether you should have stayed.
Whether everybody who told you this was a bad idea is about to be proven right.
It is making decisions while exhausted.
It is grieving things you chose to leave.
That part surprised me.
Sometimes you can know something needed to end and still mourn the hell out of it.
A relationship.
A home.
A job.
A friendship.
A version of yourself.
A future you had already imagined.
Walking away does not automatically mean you wanted everything you built to disappear.
Sometimes it just means you finally understood you could not keep living inside it.
For a long time, I thought every new beginning meant I had failed at the last one.
I would look around and think, How am I here again?
Surely at some point grown adults are supposed to build a life and then just...keep it.
Right?
Apparently not.
Or at least not me.
At this point I have rebuilt enough times to qualify for some kind of contractor's license.
And every rebuild came with more baggage.
Lessons.
Better instincts.
Worse trust issues.
Stories I wish I did not have.
Decisions I absolutely would not make again.
Decisions I probably will make again because apparently self-awareness does not automatically cure stupidity.
And somewhere along the way, I managed to accumulate what can only be described as a yacht full of trauma.
Very luxurious.
Terrible amenities.
Would not recommend.
But something else happened too.
Every time my life fell apart, I learned a little more about what I actually wanted when I put it back together.
Not what I was supposed to want.
Not what looked successful.
Not what made everybody else comfortable.
What I wanted.
That has been a much harder question than I expected.
Because most of us spend years building lives around things we never consciously chose.
You get married because that is what comes next.
Buy the house.
Take the job.
Stay somewhere because leaving would be complicated.
Keep people because you have known them forever.
Keep doing things because you are already good at them.
And suddenly you look around and realize you have successfully built a life you are not sure you even want.
So you change something.
And sometimes changing one thing knocks over everything else.
That is the part nobody puts on the inspirational quote.
Starting over does not always feel brave.
Sometimes it feels embarrassing.
Sometimes terrifying.
Sometimes financially irresponsible.
Sometimes lonely as hell.
Sometimes starting over is not a brave decision at all. Sometimes it is simply what you do when staying where you are is no longer an option.
And then one day you realize:
I am still here.
Maybe bruised.
Maybe broke.
Maybe living somewhere I never thought I would live, doing something I never thought I would be doing, surrounded by people I never expected to meet.
But still here.
Still building.
I used to believe the goal was to finally get everything right.
Build the right life.
Choose the right person.
Make the right decisions.
Then protect that life like hell so I would never have to start over again.
I do not think that anymore.
Now I think maybe the goal is to build a life you are willing to keep changing.
A life that can grow when you do.
A life where realizing something does not fit is not automatically a catastrophe.
Where leaving something that no longer works does not erase everything you learned while you were there.
Maybe starting over is not evidence that your life keeps failing.
Maybe starting over is how you eventually stop living a life that was handed to you and start designing one yourself.
And I am still designing mine.
Very much still designing it.
There are pieces scattered everywhere.
Some instructions are missing.
A few parts are definitely installed backward.
But I am no longer trying to rebuild the life I lost.
I am building the life I want.
And if I get part of it wrong?
I'll change it.
If I outgrow it?
I'll change it.
And if everything crashes and burns again and I have to start over one more time?
Then I'll fucking start over again.
If this hit home: you do not have to have everything figured out.