Trying to Figure Life Out

As salaam alaikum,

Yes, I am currently trying to figure life out...not life in general, just my life. I'm trying to make sense of it all. I feel like I'm rapidly cycling through moods and turning points and I don't know when it's all going to end. When I arrive at the answer, I guess. I don't know.

It's a weird feeling right now. I feel like I've been flying for a while before I recognized that I could fly. And then, once I did, I soared for a bit before becoming nervous about my falling, feeling precarious at such high heights with the fear of falling to my death at intervals, freaking out when hitting bumpy air with that startled feeling. I'm flying and I have a bit of an idea about where I'm going, what it's like, but I don't really know where I'm going or where I'll end up.

I think that's a fair metaphor.

I've got everything I need to go where I want to go in life, to achieve my wildest dreams, and I know this...I guess I'm afraid because things have been too easy.

I mean, relatively easy. I did study for four months for an 8 hour exam last year, the final month studying 12-14 hours daily, and third year of medical school has been the most difficult thing I've done in life up to this point, not to mention getting into medical school, getting the grades necessary in college to get into medical school, the high school grades needed to get into a good college, etc. It's been a long, hard-working road. I guess I'm talking in terms of the opportunities I've had in life and education...those opportunities have been limitless. There has not been anything that I really wanted to do that I haven't gotten to do, any place where I really want to go that I haven't gotten to go with relative ease...well, once again, with work, but still, pretty much given the opportunity, I prayerfully go forward to achieve what I need. Alhamdulillah.

I guess I feel precarious about those things in life that I actually cannot work for, those things that just happen. Not just relationships, but tragedy as well. Tragedy, hardship, struggle, loss, those things we are promised that will befall us. And sure, I've had struggle in life...growing up with a brother with autism was one of the first hard things he and I faced together as kids, he still faces on a daily basis, who he is, what others think of him and his frustration at times when he's not understood. It was only second-hand for me.

How I feel about life right now...I feel like I've been flying a relatively smooth flight, but it's summer, and the air is hot, so the flight is a little bumpy. I've been tolerating the bumps fine, they've been minor, but I'm afraid of a moment when suddenly the plane dips a bit, those times when I'll grab hold to the arm rest, my stomach tight. Those moments where even though I tell myself that millions of planes take off and land without incident in this country every year, I still get that tight feeling in my stomach as if the plane will drop and drop and crash.

The dips are never that bad once I've gone through them.

But I'm freaking out a little on the inside about life, and those things that I can't control. Those things have the potential to be the most beautiful things in life, and they probably will be, probably, like, the inspiration for the characters of many more stories that I write, but man...life is so scary sometimes, I wish I could figure out a hint, a key, something, to set my mind and heart at ease.

These are the thoughts and words of a woman who has overcome grand disillusionment of her own creation, trying to find another reality in which to understand life.