Never Made for This Life

I was never built for this life.
That’s the simple truth.

I excelled at it for a time.
Mastering the mindless pursuits.
Collecting the pieces that signaled success.

The house. 
The shiny new car.
Fancy job title after fancy job title.
Bigger paycheck after bigger paycheck.
More than one successful business.
All of it more quickly than most.

I bought into the lie that life was supposed to look a certain way. That I was supposed to be and achieve and accumulate based on a meaningless formula made up of money and pretty, polished things. I let others convince me that happiness was on the other side of material and financial pursuits.

Happiness has never been on the other side. 
Not of success, money, things, or titles.
I played the game for over a decade.
I gave it everything I had…
And it took everything that made me who I was.
Every. Last. Thing.

I made myself small.
Dimmed my light and closed my heart.
Giving away pieces of myself.

For love.
Acceptance.
Happiness.
Success.

Because that’s “what you do.”
Until you don’t.

Until you decide to play a different game. To untangle yourself from the mess of expectations and obligations that were never aligned with your heart and soul. Until you do the most challenging and heartbreaking work of releasing yourself from the grip of patterns and beliefs that kept you small. Until you choose, with every cell in your being, to create the life you were always meant to live. Leaving behind the safe, known, well trodden path that was never yours to walk.

I like this path much better.
Despite its challenges.