Longtime readers will know that I don’t really “do” New Year’s resolutions. And I don’t pick a word of the year (WOTY) most years either. But it feels appropriate to have a WOTY this year because I am experiencing major life changes.
For most of my adult life I have had the goal of earning a PhD. I always expected that I would complete this degree and then work as a professor and/or researcher for the Department of Defense (DoD). And I made it all the way to the last step: I completed all of the coursework, wrote and defended a master’s thesis, passed the comprehensive exam, and completed two prestigious fellowships. I have been a doctoral candidate (also known as all-but-dissertation [ABD]) for four-and-a-half years. And that entire time I have been too ill and/or broken to be able to work on the dissertation.
Each time there was some improvement in my health, I would attempt to work on my dissertation. And, each time, my health would experience a significant setback. Determined as I am to complete this goal, conditioned as I am to never quit, I can’t keep ignoring this pattern. In the back of my mind, I hear Dr. Phil saying:
And I have to admit, it *isn’t* working. And, as the saying goes, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
The truth is, sometimes it doesn’t matter how determined you are or how hard you’ve worked – sometimes you just can’t reach the finish line.
This is a harsh reality when you are chronically ill – sometimes you just can’t will your dreams into reality because your body betrays you, and no matter how badly you want something or how hard you try, your body just won’t do what you want or need it to do.
So it’s time to cut my losses and move on.
Which means that I am now in freefall. By letting go of the end of the rope to which I’ve been hanging for so many years, I find myself falling into the unknown. Letting go of the goal to which I’ve been fiercely holding tight for so many years is scary, even though I know that I have to let go in order to make room for something new.
So I’m leaping off a cliff, freefalling into the unknown future with hands that are bloody from having held on so tightly to this dream for so many years, bloody from having fought so long not to have it pried from my grip.
If I’m honest, the future is always unknown. That’s just hard to admit for those of us who like to pretend that we can control the future by making plans and following them. But becoming chronically ill has forced me to confront my illusions of control. When you are forced to accept that you can’t control your own body, you realize you don’t have control of much else either.
Therefore, 2019 will be a year of transition, a year of major life changes for me. We’ve moved across the country, to a fixer-upper, so renovations will begin again (after three years of renovating the house we thought was our retirement home in the Rockies). I am surrendering the dream that I have held for decades, and which I have been actively pursuing for the past eight-and-a-half years. I will continue to pursue diagnoses for my chronic illnesses in 2019. And Spousal Unit and I will have to figure out what comes next – how do we want to live our lives here and now. Here, in this new place, and now that we have surrendered the dreams that led us to Colorado. Now that our lives are shaped by my illnesses and disability.
But first, I’m going to grieve the death of this dream that I have pursued for so long. I’m going to grieve the change in my physical status from able-bodied to disabled and chronically ill. I’m going to sit with my feelings and fully feel them, rather than running away from them or ignoring them, as I have done for most of my life. And then I will work on acceptance – acceptance of my new reality, acceptance of “what is and what can never be.”
I know that I have to let go of this dream in order to make room for whatever is next. I’ve been stuck spinning my wheels for years. It’s time to make a change, time to let go and move on.
But I’ve never quit before, you see, so it’s going to take some time for me to process this.
And then I think I’ll have a wake for my PhD. It has consumed a large portion of my life, and I think a commemoration is in order. I will grieve, and I will honor its passing, and then I will rise from the ashes of the life I thought I would have and walk into my alternate future.
