What to do when you don't know what to do

First off, unless you are completely put together like nobody's business, I'm sure you have found yourself in the place where you just don't know what to do.  For some reason, I feel like I keep finding myself in this place, this place of uncertainty and indecisiveness.  Exactly a month ago, I wrote a post concerning my uncertainty about returning to the United States.  Things have only become more complicated.

So what do we do when we don't know what to do?  Well, me personally, I listen to passionate, emotion-filled music that makes me want to move and dance and throw my arms in the air and embrace everything I just don't quiet understand yet.  I also find that letting out my uncertainties in drawings and paintings is quiet useful.  And then there is journaling and blogging.  Being that I have already done the first two things to do when you don't know what to do, I'm now getting to the third one, blogging.

I was raised in a church which taught me that judgement was the ultimate thing to fear and the most powerful tool to use.  I learned from a young age that every one had an opinion on what you were doing and how you did it and if you didn't do it right, you were going to hell.  In this environment, I learned to judge and be judged, to shame and to be shamed, and to place other people in a position of incredible power over my life.  My life.  Maybe that's why I dyed my hair crazy colors and styled it outrageously.  Maybe that's why I left the United States in the first place way back in 2007.  Maybe that's why I left the church.  I have wanted to direct my own life.

After talking with my Dad today, I was reminded of how it feels to not be judged.  My Dad may not be a saint, and we have had our rough spots, but if there is one thing he has always done right is to never, ever judge me.  I know that, no matter what I do, he will support me in it.  I was reminded that when I find myself in a place of indecision, feeling guilty for wanting something that doesn't please every body, that the real truth of the matter is, my life, is my life.  Plain and simple.  No one else has to walk in my shoes, no one else gets to choose what I do and where I live.  In the very, very end, it is all on me.  Maybe I will choose the "wrong" thing, but it was my choice.  Maybe it won't please every one, but at least it pleases me and I'm the one who has to deal with me, all the time, for the rest of my life.

Life is crazy, and there will be times, many times perhaps, where you and I will find ourselves in places where we don't know what to do.  In this instant, when every thing is acting whirly-twirly around you, sit yourself down, take your own hand, and remind yourself, this is your life, don't let anyone else try to live it for you.  And then turn up some Florence + The Machine and rock out with your hands up in the air, ready to take life by her big gorgeous hands and dance with her all the way through.  It's my life, and I will live it big, and loud, and how I think is best for me.  You only live once, right?