This is all about my messy life.

My day job is a complicated thing. I work in sex and health education and I hate it exactly half of the time. It’s not even close to what I went to school for and I don’t really know how I fell into it. But… usually it works. I like teaching sex ed. I like doing HIV outreach. I love the relationships I’ve built with my community’s teachers and I especially love the relationship I have with the students I am privileged to teach.

I was offered a new job yesterday. It pays more. A lot more. It would be a return to the field I went to graduate school for and it would mean better hours and best of all, getting to work outside.

But I love my current job. Exactly half of the time.

But money.

But the kids… (God, how I will miss those kids)

But the river (God, how I missed the river)

But….

Buddha teaches us that all suffering comes from our attachment to things. I should be thrilled at this new opportunity, at more money, at a return to outdoor biological work where I belong. Yet, I hurt. This decision grieves me. So what am I so attached to?

My job now, teaching sex ed and doing HIV prevention and outreach, is my only outlet into the LGBTQ community in my real life. It is the only time I can freely and openly stand amongst my LGBTQ brothers and sisters. I have intense attachment to that, that one opportunity to step out of the shadows and feel the sun on my face.

I’ve been learning to let go of things. To practice detachment. I have to let go of my attachment to that sincere wish – that I could be open about who I am and that I can do so without consequences. That cannot happen; I have to let it go. My pain is attached to that wish.

I have to let go of my attachment to my fear – that I am not good enough, that I will fail, that I will disappoint. I have to let it go. My pain is attached to my fear.

My pain is attached to my indecision, to my doubt, to my regret that though I love the job exactly half of the time, the other half carried more weight. I wanted it to be something that it was not. I wanted to be someone that I was not. My pain is attached to all of that.

And so, I have to let it go. I have to recognize that no one will make this decision for me. No one will live this life for me. No one will give me the answers.

(Most of all, I have to let go of the fact that I am not a full time professional writer. Because my attachment to that dream is the strongest and deepest and I don’t remember a time without it. I feel like my life is built around that dream, that the bricks of my life are unwritten books, that every part of me moves to the beat of that secret heart. It causes me great pain. I rage, I cry, I want it so badly and

and I have to let. it. go.)

This is all about my messy life.

I’m trying to clean it up, take everything that doesn’t matter.

And let it go.