The last day of the year one should take a minute to think of those things done, the ones omitted, the ones repeated.
I started 2011 taking the decision to turn my life around: I applied to the University of Haifa in Israel. The decision to change my life was difficult in itself, but doing so turned out to be so complicated it seemed I would never make it. How do we get caught up in our own lives it’s nearly impossible to leave vicious loops within them?
The first part of the year went by in waiting and wishing, months of uncertainty build up to the point of nearly giving up.
Experiencing failure is one thing, experiencing rejection is character building, but experiencing failure, rejection and massive disappointment in a short time, I can assure you, will mess with your head. By the time July showed up on my calendar I was standing empty-handed in front of the image of what I wanted to be and the image of a person, so hollow, I wished I would just disappear.
What am I doing that is so wrong? The recurrent question.
At that point the only smart thing I did was to turn the people I love most. I was overwhelmed, alone and drowning in my own aimless actions, it seemed so odd for me to seek refuge in the people I cared for, and it was very surprising to find that most times I only needed to be able to ask for help. It was because I’m lucky enough to love people around me and be loved back -many times undeservedly- that I got the necessary strength to push through the last months of the admission process to the university and the bureaucracy attached to it.
Asking for help is what I learned from 2011, in the sense of identifying what I need and then expressing it in an appropriate way so people actually understand what it is I’m asking of them.
Such a simple thing… I got to stretch out my hand and reach one of my dreams because I asked for help, and I’m so grateful for it.
