Ideal Conditions

Hold on…wait until the next wave comes in then I’ll paddle out. The sets keep coming. There isn’t a major break. So you wait, and you wait…and wait some more. The ideal condition never comes and before you know it you’ve grown defeated, you pack up your board and say you’ll try again tomorrow. Perhaps the conditions will be more ideal then. But here’s the thing about that tomorrow you idealize…it will never come.

Ideal conditions are only that. Ideal. They exist strictly in your imagination. They’re perfect and entirely unachievable. We love them though. We love them because they’re the perfect little scapegoat. As long as we’re “waiting” for these perfect little conditions of whimsy to happen we buy ourselves excuses. Excuses to not seize opportunity. Excuses to ignore our dreams. Excuses to not lend ourselves to love. Excuses to not live that big life we would, if only the conditions would be ideal.

I know all about ideal conditions. Prefabricated excuses NOT to do something out of pure fear. Comfort is ideal right? But is it?

We become comfortable enough in life to convince ourselves we’re happy…content…secure. But are we really that comfortable? Depends on the person. All of us have ambitions and our “ideal” life. Not any one model is right. It’s what’s right for us. Based on our own wants, desires and joys we find out of life.

Compound that crazy web of weights and measures between wants and responsibility with those of another person that you’ve decided you love enough to make a life together and comfort takes on a whole other shape…for some of us.

Are you comfortable in lying in wait for your own “ideal conditions” or someone else’s? If you’re truly evolved you’re usually lying in wait for a collective list of “ideal conditions” which seem to get longer as life evolves and adds more responsibility. That finish line becomes further and further away. Sometimes you can’t even see it, it’s so far away. Sometimes it disappears altogether. It’s when this happens, I believe that is when people just plain give up.

Giving up can be either a good thing or a very bad one. When we meet this threshold we could either give up on life and give in. Or…we can give up our “ideal conditions” and say…Fuck it, I’m done waiting.

I am the queen of ideal conditions…excommunicated. 17 months ago some harsh realities smacked me across the face. My ideal conditions weren’t even my own. I had adopted a way of life that the 16 year old me, the 21 year old me and the 27-31 year old me would have said…”Da fuq are you doing girl?”

I didn’t even recognize who I was anymore. Some fucking robot in someone else’s idea of what perfect should be.

Fetching, compliant, unnecessarily apologetic. The dynamo who once was a twice published writer, aided in rebuilding a depressed Bay Area housing market, known by local police enforcement as a bad ass, young budding start up acquisition, who acted first and asked for forgiveness later had been reduced to ash.

It wasn’t just him. Life had made a point of making me strong since birth and after high school life was on a mission to make me superhuman strong, like I should be able to bench press a Buick strong.

At this moment of realization I decided that the road that brought me to this point was a long one. The road out wasn’t going to be nearly as long, the way the real me drives, but it was going to be tumultuous. Hold on baby…it’s going to get rocky.

It has been. 17 months down since I made the decision to make some significant changes, that started with me first, because you can’t fix a situation until you fix yourself first.

I’ve found “fixing” me isn’t the correct framing. Working on ourselves is a lifelong journey and we have to find someone who likes who the real us is and will support who we want to become.

Mine doesn’t like who I am. Who I truly am. Too much of a whole lotta shit he doesn’t want in a partner. He wanted me but only the way he wanted me but funnily enough the more I tried to become that the less and less he respected me. So 7 months ago I decided to go it alone. Oldest lesson in the book for women learned.

My “ideal conditions” are my own. They’re detached from anyone else’s now. It’s gotten to the point where they’re nearly non-existent. Responsibility and safety aside. I want to be that model for my daughter who shows her, not tells her, to face fear and do things in spite of “ideal conditions.”

There is always a chance we could get hurt. Broken bones heal. So do broken hearts. Scars remain but they are the indicator that we showed up for life.

To live in a state of paralysis to make someone else secure and happy is just plain suicide. When you’re staring down the barrel of your own undoing to appease someone else you have to decide…is it going to be me or them? I choose me…All…fucking…day…long. Do me a favor, choose you. Choosing them first will never make them respect you. It has the reverse effect.

If you won’t choose you. Who will? You have to choose yourself first before you can make anyone else happy. Whole on your own. Then realize happiness is unobtainable for some mindsets or for some happiness is found in misery.

So what now? Now…I say paddle. I have been paddling against the waves for the last year or so. It hasn’t been ideal but I’ll tell you it’s making me strong. Stronger than I’ve ever been marked by many moments of weakness.

Moments of weakness are necessary. They’re proof that you’ve been strong for too long.

They’re usually followed by reckless abandon…when I get my nerves about me, bear down and duck dive underneath a massive wave just to pop out on the back end out of the impact zone and in the calm.

Some days that sleeper wave comes out of nowhere and wipes me out…but you get back on that board and keep paddling knowing damn well you’re going to get rocked again at some point but it sure beats standing on the shore wishing conditions were ideal enough to truly live.