When I was twenty-one I found myself in an awful predicament.
With a semester and a half to go before graduating from college, I got pregnant.
I decided that snowy January that the only logical way to handle the unexpected turn of events was to marry my boyfriend, a homesick Vietnamese refugee seven years my senior, who was poised to receive an electrical engineering degree that May. Like the fools we were, we hadn’t used birth control for the five years we’d been together—not really—because we’d assumed it wouldn’t happen to us. But, there we were, coasting mindlessly down that path, so we shrugged and agreed to pull the trigger.
The only problem was, I had no idea who I was. I had no real vision for my life. None. My only goal was to escape my parent’s household, and to latch on to a man very different from my unhappy dad. A dazed and confused immigrant from a third-world, war-torn nation seemed to fit that bill.
Overnight, I felt this strange brick wall bump against my back. My toes suddenly brushed against this gynormous rock. Things began happening at warp speed. Crazy town set in.
While penning my wedding invitations and planning the menu, rivulets of sweat ran down my neck. I giggled when people spoke to me. I couldn’t hold eye contact. I flirted shamelessly with my physical chemistry teaching assistant, a bossy pro-Khomeini graduate student from the Islamic Republic of Iran I’d developed an inexplicable crush on. Two weeks before my wedding, I slept with him. I began lying. To everybody. I started doing impulsive things, like spitting gum in a classmate’s face. I made my girlfriends promise not to mention my impending nuptials, or the incubating baby. As if somehow, by not putting words to it, reality would tip its hat and slink out the back door.
I sensed that I’d lost all control. I had no idea what to do. I was paralyzed, a blinking deer in the floodlights, because I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. I couldn’t get a bead on what I wanted, though I knew precisely what was expected of me. I couldn’t get quiet long enough to hear myself think.
And that’s the problem with crossroads decisions that go hand in hand with a lot of pain. That’s why letting go, changing your mind, doing what is right for you often looks impossible. (No decision, by the way, is a decision. Let’s not kid ourselves.)
You can’t tune in to your inner wisdom—that voice that will tell you what to do— until you banish the noise of those you stand to hurt or disappoint.
In the midst of all that shouting and crying and blaming and rage, you possess the answer. And I have a way for you to access it: The Crow.
The crow knows what to do. The crow knows the answer to every question. Always. Trust the crow.
If you need an answer, if you need to get clear right now because time is not your friend, get quiet and listen to this. Find a comfortable spot and thirty minutes of uninterrupted time. Do it. Now.
Consider this a gift from someone who understands just how hard it is to disappoint.
Click on the MP3 link below. And give it a few minutes to upload.
