After my many failed attempts to be accepted at a university, tired, worn out and disillusioned I announced my parents that I had had enough and decided to stop trying to be what I was not and to do what I did not want to do. Obviously – I told them – I am not university material and I will not make myself feel worse by failing again. I was going to get a job and accept myself just as I was. My parents, having watched my suffering year after year after year, told me that I could do whatever I needed do in order to be happy.
And so I stopped studying and started to think about getting a job. In communist Romania, the process of hunting for a job was somewhat different than what North America knows to be the norm, so I asked my mother to find me a job. She used her connections, she talked to her friends and colleagues and she did get me a job.
I felt free! FREE! For the first time, after the 16 years I had spent studying things that I did not care about, I was finally allowed to not study. With very few exceptions – languages and anatomy – I had no interest in any of the courses and classes I attended during all my school years.
I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I felt and how proud I was to have actually had the guts to make this decision. I moved to Bucharest, started my new job and felt like I was living for the first time in my life. I was 22 years old.
My life as ME started right then and there, through my refusal to stop doing something that I did not want to do from the beginning: follow a path just because everybody around me seemed to think that it was the right one, even though it felt wrong to me.
Up until this point, I did not know that I had the power to say no to something I did not want to do and choose something else instead.
This is when I took the reins and decided to create my life according to my own vision and my own desires.
What happened next, only a few short months later surprised everyone around me, but it did not surprise me!
Stay tuned.
I’ll tell you what happened tomorrow!
Love,
Rucsandra