The Sidelines

Its amazing how we allow people to shove us into the sidelines. To make us sit and wait behind some curtain until they feel they need us as a prop in their next scene.

Have you ever experienced that? Have you felt how it was to simply "wait" - wait for the next chance, the next big break; Wait for the next phone call, the next opportunity to meet, the next excuse to be together, the next promise to be broken.

I always found myself to be a "lady in waiting", seated nonchalantly behind the scenes, watching others in their act, knowing full well that without me, their scene would be meaningless, and vice versa. I never did want to take the lead. threw away opportunities life presented into the hands of those who were least expecting it, and watched as they made a mess of it.

I recall these words from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice: "I hold the world but as the world - a stage where every man must play his part, and mine a sad one", and have noticeably, lived my life as a spectator; allowing others to pen my experiences and my lines, until recently, a rude awakening got me to my feet and as I sat back and caught up on life's moments lost, I realised that it was indeed time to take the lead, to step up to my expectations and live the life that I was meant to live.

At times it is necessary to hit rock bottom, before you can actually get up and take control of your life. Its the choices that you make, when you are down under that determine what spirit you were born with. And its the decisions that you take, in your darkest moments that actually gives flight to your determination to get up and soar the skies once again.

I had always set high aspirations for myself. I remember my mother used to roll her eyes at me and shake her head wondering where I got those ideas from. I am still the same, only now, I shock myself with my ideas. But when I scrutinize my life, I find I somehow deviated from the path I had set out for myself. And I had no one to blame but myself. In search of life's secrets, I forgot  where I was steering the craft. It was only when I hit the wall that I sat here and pondered how I got here in the first place.

Where had I come? Who had I become? Who's eyes were these starring back at me from the mirror? Where had the "real me" disappeared to? As I sat there, engulfed by the darkness of my own shadows, I relived every moment, every disappointment every hurt and every pain I had allowed myself to experience.

And thus the journey begins...

We learn about our self only in our defeat and about life better only in pain - Unknown