Supposed To...

I found my first white hair this evening. 


I was supposed to be the proud woman who wore her grey hair as a crown.
I was supposed to be the wise old woman who had wisdom to give her grandchildren, grandnieces, grandnephews, nieces, and nephews.
I was supposed to be the woman who proudly declared who she was to the world, without bending to the will of others' preconceptions and expectations.
But,
I was also supposed to live a life where my mother didn't die when I was seventeen.
I was also supposed to have one marriage and three children (so said a palm reader to me once).
I was also supposed to have a husband who loved me for who I was and stayed with me and supported me throughout my whole life.
I was also supposed to have figured out what I wanted and begun achieving it by my 30s.
I was also supposed to live a life where I didn't start my life out living others' expectations as my own.

I started a journal a long time ago with the plan to hand it down to my children. It was a book of things I have learned over the years.  I wanted my children to know what I was like when I was young, in case I was so different by the time they were old enough to understand that there would be a major difference.  I do think I am not the same woman I was when I began that journal 10 years ago. 

 I haven't written in that journal in awhile, I think because I wasn't sure how to present any of the lessons I was learning while I was in the middle of them.  But I think one lesson can be summed up now:  I have learned that there is no such thing as supposed to. It's a myth. I'd even go so far as to say it's a lie - one we tell ourselves. 

"Lying to others might be wrong, but lying to yourself is just a tragedy"  Mary Allison

"Freedom is for honest people. No man who is not himself honest can be free – he is his own trap.” Unknown

"Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune."  William James

It's easy to get caught up in the depressed attitude associated with self-deception.  It's easy to get caught in "this shouldn't have happened," but it's not productive or healthy.  I have moments when I double-over with the thought that this is not the life I wanted.  Sometimes I think I don't want life like this - without my parents, without my husband.  But what can any of us do but keep doing?  The reality is that this is the life we get.  There is no way that life was supposed to go.  It only goes forward from here.   

"I understand that it's hard for everyone, but one cannot give in to emotions... we'll have to draw lessons from the current crisis and now we'll have to work on overcoming it."  Boris Yeltsin

"And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great."  Genesis 26:13