Back To The Future

My Facebook feed is flooded with Back to the Future memes showing Marty McFly and the October 26/October 21 dates in the time machine.  Tonight my husband and I (what?!) watched the first movie in the Back to the Future series.  It was showing here in Lithuania (Double what?! Wait! Whoa! Back up!).

Okay, looks like I need to start over, rewind, back up a bit.  If you read my last post and paid attention to the date, you noticed it was written over three years ago.  If you checked out this blog at all, you found that I started writing here in 2008.  If you spent any time perusing posts, or if you’ve been a follower of this blog, you know that The Wild Mind is not married.  And she does NOT live in Lithuania, instead she lives in a small rural city in the southern part of the Pacific Northwest.  In fact, if you know anything about The Wild Mind at all in real life you know that there is no way she would ever be able to get out of her small rural location to travel the world.  Not with her expenses.  Not with her situation.  Not with her job.  Not with her kids.

Life has a funny way of working out, doesn’t it?

I’ve been silent here for over three years.  I started this blog back in 2008.  Back then I was single, adjusting to the reality that I was probably going to be single for some time, and I was nearing my 50’s.  I don’t think this is anyone’s ideal scenario, to be almost 50, twice-divorced, and on your own again, this time with fewer financial resources and four little mouths to feed. It certainly wasn’t my life’s dream.

Two years later, in 2010, I made some small but significant changes in my perspective.  It wasn’t a major life-changing move or career change or relationship. It was simply that I arrived at the place where I realized that I didn’t need anyone else to complete me or to make my life great.  I didn’t need to pin my dreams or hopes or future on the existence of another person or a “relationship”.  It was a small thing really.  Insignificant almost.

I bought a bike.

But I bought the bike.  A husband didn’t buy it for me.  A boyfriend didn’t give it to me.  I bought it.  But before I bought it, I arrived at the realization that I didn’t need to rely on anyone else but myself to get out of life what I wanted…and at that place in my journey, what I wanted…what I needed most…was a bike.

I paid cash for the bike and rode it home on October 2, 2010, just as the weather began to turn cold and gloomy.  I put three thousand miles on that bike and then bought a road bike and I put 3,000 miles on that bike.  I was diagnosed with cancer. I continued to work. I rode my bike to and from my radiation treatments.  I had a two-year relationship that ended badly and surprisingly and which should never have happened (like so many of the relationships I had between 2008 and 2012).  The bike helped me heal.  The bike was my therapy.  I worked through a load of issues on the open road.  I also got stronger.

Things began to change.  Finances improved. My four children grew up. Three of them are now on their own and the youngest is in high school. I no longer live in the same southern Oregon community that I lived in when I penned these earlier posts.  I no longer have the same job.  I no longer have the same name.

The person I was seven years ago when I started this blog, no longer exists.  She’s not dead, but she’s transformed.  Less fearful, more confident.  Less anxious, more expectant in the face of challenges and setbacks.  This is not to say that I’m perfectly evolved or mature.  I’m not.  But I’ve grown.  I’m different. My life is different. And three years ago, I would never have predicted any of it.

All I knew three years ago, when I scrawled those words late at night in my home in rural southern Oregon, was that I had finally taken control of my life.  I was making my own decisions rather than acquiescing to the manipulations of others. I chose my path.  I said no when I needed to say no.  I decided my future instead of allowing others to steamroller over me. Life for me changed. It felt good.

I had no intention of taking a three year break from writing here, but as life would have it, there were exciting things in store for me.  I had heartbreaks and high points and all sorts of experiences in between, but it all started with that one small moment in 2010, when I decided to buy my own bike.

You know the rest of the story, even before I tell it, don’t you?  One decision makes possible another, and another and because of those decisions certain events transpire and before you know it my personal landscape is so transformed that it is unbelievable, even to me.  It’s a rags to riches (sort of) story.  It’s a fairy tale of sorts. Many people tell me that because I put it out to the Universe it happened.  I personally believe I just got to the place where I was grateful.  I was just constantly grateful, even during the worst of times I always found something to be deeply grateful for. One thing led to another, bad times gave way to better times and through it all I was grateful. My gratitude expanded into more reasons to be grateful.

Three years ago, I left this blog, because my life became filled with stress on steroids, and though I loved this digital hangout, I wasn’t able to show up here. I didn’t mean to be gone so long.  I also didn’t know that I would ever return. But today, I decided to look this blog up, I reconnected myself digitally to this space, and here I am.  There’s a bit of new look to the blog, but then there’s a whole lot of a new life for me.  Yet coming back here today, meant revisiting the past, some of which I wish I could erase.  If I could erase what I chose from my past, it would alter my present situation, just like Marty McFly’s interactions could have changed his existence.

After going through the posts and reliving the experiences, I decided to continue here rather than delete this blog.  I’m glad to be back. It feels like coming home. It’s been a long time.

We’ve got some catching up to do, don’t we?