Everything I’ve Ever Wanted

When I was a little girl, maybe six or seven, Disney movies permeated my deepest desires. My number one wish was to be like the princesses and find my true love. That want has stayed with me throughout my life, and to be honest I wasted a few of the best years of my life chasing noxious love.

When my personality was developed beyond Disney and Lisa Frank, in high school. The time had come for me to start forging the path to my career. Although I was still searching for a partner, I started to add new dreams to my aspiration arsenal. I knew I wanted to help people, I wanted to make some kind of positive difference in the world.

As I muddled my way through college, a treacherous journey that took much longer than I had planned. I continued to collect ambitions. I now wanted fur babies, a place to live that I could be proud of and most of all to leave the small set of cities that made up the metro area where I felt so trapped.

My early 20’s brought many mistakes and misadventures into my life. Those harrowing experiences did a lot to clarify my existing desires. At 24 I decided not only did I want love but I wanted a healthy, happy relationship, and I still wanted to help people but I specifically wanted to help people who were stigmatized by society, people who were trying to recover in one way or another.

Now at 26 I seem to have everything I’ve ever wanted. I was offered a great job as a Phone Counselor for a mental health and chemical dependency hospital very soon after I finished my bachelor’s degree. Which brought the opportunity for me to move to beautiful Louisville, KY. I love my apartment here, it’s big, with vaulted ceilings and a breakfast bar, better than I could have imagined. I live with my  two beautiful cats together.

I have everything I have ever wanted I guess.

But there is still part of me that is not satisfied. I have spent the last month trying to push the longing creeping up in my heart back to the bottom where it belongs. I have spent many nights thinking about how foolish these feeling were.

This week as I was driving down the highway on my morning commute to work, I heard for the first time the song “Satisfied” from the Tony award winning musical Hamilton. (How?! I know, I know, I have defiantly been living under a rock.) Although the song is not directly related to my particular situation, it allowed me to stretch my perspective a little. Maybe there is some strength in never being satisfied. In being hungry for knowledge and ability. To be excited when you get the chance to learn more, to do more.  So instead of stifling the drive for more I have decided to run with it and see where is takes me.