Today I Feel Sad -- Take 2

I am the one who wears a thousand masks, one for each day and time. I am the one who learned to be all I’m expected to be, but is still not sure of who I really am.” (Knell, 2007)

My student asked me if they should use a symbol between the quote and the author of the quote. We were working on a writing assignment in Google Docs and I was switching between tabs as I checked on each student in their virtual writing room. I told her how to properly introduce a quote and then left her to make the changes while I moved on to the next "room." Today was a good day, for class that is. I didn't have to sneak in any possible chance to mute my mic so I could blow my nose profusely. I had slept more than 4 hours the night before, so my mind was alert. I had prepared my class so I was ready to teach. I had a fun game to try to keep my students engaged. 

But before class started, I was irritated. And after class ended, that turned into sullenness. And after lunch, it had subsided into feeling sad. Again. 

I tell my students they should never start a sentence with "But" or "And" and I hammer this into their heads all semester long. They may go into their academic classes still not knowing how to spell "opportunity" but there is always auto-correct for that. There is no auto-correct to catch some grammar mistakes just as there is no auto-correct to catch some mistakes we make in life. 

I guess I'm still trying to figure out if I made the right choices in my life. All too often, they seem to have been made with others in mind. My mom, my brother, my boss, my best friend, my husband. But isn't that what we are supposed to do, as Christians? To make decisions based on what would make others happy? Aren't we supposed to serve others? Isn't thinking of ourselves being selfish?

My mom used to love asking me a question when I was growing up and caught amidst the angst of it all. If you could be anything in the world, what would you be? In this scenario, money was never an issue and I was free to dream up anything my heart desired. Sometimes I was a marriage and family therapist, other times I was a doctor, most of the time I wasn't where I was then. 

I dreamed to going to another university. I dreamed of getting my masters and then my doctorate in marriage and family therapy. I dreamed of specializing in addiction studies. I dreamed of having my own family with little ones to call me Mommy. I dreamed of a little house. I dreamed of traveling to Australia and South America. I dreamed of writing a book. I dreamed of being a teacher. 

Then I grew up. Some of my dreams were born after those teen years and I saw those dreams realized as I sat across from my desk advising students in the registrar's office or traveled across the ocean to live and work in one of my many heart-countries. Some dreams morphed into what I could manage, like my masters degree that was not in any way related to marriage and family therapy but was still a therapeutic and validating experience that I proudly financed on my own. 

Some dreams are still working themselves out. You see, they don't tell you that when you dream, the dream is the wish your heart makes but then that dream is in actuality a whole lot of hard work. The first stage is most likely infatuation, where all seems easy and you are euphoric about finally receiving your dream. Then you move into reality and this is where the dream's ephemeral qualities suddenly tumble into broken pottery. Everything is frustrating and nothing makes sense and the only thing that keeps you going is the knowledge that, once upon a time, this was your dream and you cannot abandon it now. 

So you slog on through. 

When I returned to the country I had spent my teen years in, I felt my dream had come true. I had left this country more than 15 years prior with the sad feeling that I would never be able to live again in the moments that had defined who I was. I was certain I would never see my dearest friends again. Yet somehow fate smiled on me and here I was, back when I belonged. 

I soaked up those first two years, even as I battled through the homesickness. Every free moment was enraptured with falling in love--with a country. Taxi drivers who would have married me for the equivalent of a Happy Meal were incredulous at my jubilant exclamation that I was so happy to be here. Then reality hit. The garbage piled high on the side of the street. The lack of due process and procedure, overridden by connections and the almighty dollar. The buildings crumbling in disrepair as no loving hands respected their precious historical value. The relationships that only meant something if you were someone, or could give something. It became difficult. Too difficult. 

I married. I had a steady job. We moved into a cubby-hole-perfect little first basement apartment. I battled mold, learned to cook complex Iranian dishes, ate roasted sunflower seeds by the kilo, and vacuumed the house every Friday afternoon. I was living my dreams in the country I had dreamed of, and yet I was not happy. 

Perhaps it really was okay to blame everything on the pandemic. Or perhaps I just simply grew up. Perhaps now I was having to accept that the dreams I'd had, when taken off the pedestal and out of the soft light, were revealed as they really were. Just another fact of life. A broken piece of pottery I was now responsible to polish and scrape until it looked somewhat presentable for society.

Because in the end, that was where my circle came back to. Doing things for others. Doing things because others expected them. That was why I went to church every Saturday, cooked pasta with potato tahdig, made endless photocopies and answered inane emails, and tried to grow a garden. 

If I could do anything in the world, what would I do? I would work only enough in the year to pay for my expenses. Then I would take 3 or 6 months off and spend that time luxuriating in stillness. I would sit outside and watch the ants carrying bits of leaves to their nest. I would travel to countries just so I could visit cathedrals and sit reverently in a corner. I would get my doctoral degree in psychology and give seminars and teach. I would adopt three little children, two boys and one girl. I would live in a home with few things but many books. 

Some dreams never die. Others molt and become something bigger and more beautiful than we could have imagined. Some dreams come true but it takes us years to realize that what we have taken for granted all along was what kept our soul alive. 

For me, this is writing. And being loved. Above all my dreams, knowing I matter to someone is the best dream of all and I am so thankful for that. So while there are days I feel sad, or jaded, or I cry for no reason, I try to hold onto a little hope that dreams still have meaning. I still have purpose. I have a future.