Unfinished Business - Overcoming Hurdles

I suppose I could go on and on about how Romeo and Juliet fell in love and then tragically died - but that is not how this story ended (and thankfully so).

The story does however come to an abrupt ending (well so I think) when we realised that even though we love each other, there are just too many "hurdles" to take into account. We could so easily have continued to see each other behind closed doors, but that is not the ingredients for a honest relationship.  And although I cannot speak for the other party (Romeo), I can say that for a brief moment in my life I knew and still know what it feels like to love someone and be loved by that person in return. One suddenly feels alive to all kinds of possibilities that we only tend to dream about. 

When he checked into rehab for alcohol abuse almost three months after we met I immediately picked up the pen and started to write.  I had decided that I would write to him about what I was doing while he was in rehab and in the end I wrote a total of 46 letters in 28 days which were never sent or read by him.

It started out as letters to a recovering alcoholic but in the end I started to deal with my own issues, and in particular, my emotional issues. Just typing these few sentences and I am already starting to relive those 28 days of March to April 2012 and as a result, the tears are beginning to well up again. Tears which never came easily to me for many years, flowed for many days in that time, mostly, because for the first time I felt afraid.  People who know me well, know that there is very little that scares me (if at all). 

So for 28 days without realising it, I put myself through emotional therapy.  I discovered that not facing my emotional self was the biggest hurdle holding me back from accomplishing many of the goals which I had set for myself.  I have always wanted to start my own business and have for many years come up with various ideas.  Pitching them to people who I knew could help me with them but somehow I just could not take that first step to getting any of the ideas registered.  I always wanted to write a novel which I started and had written at least the opening chapter to it a few years back and then carried on with the story in my head.  

So much unfinished business it was starting to overwhelm me. I started doubting my own abilities when I knew full well how much I am capable of.  After all, when one has the talents of Leonardo Da Vinci, then one has the responsibility to make use of it.  It would be wrong for me not to make my ideas work when I know that it can change the lives of many.  And so with the writing of the letters to my Romeo I embarked on a journey of renewal.  Setting new goals and putting mechanisms in place to accomplish these goals.  

One of my goals is to complete the novel I had started and so I signed up for a creative writing course through Random House Struik in 2012 under the guidance of Mike Nicol (a well known author, mikenicol.bookslive.co.za‎).  The course gave me insight into the world of authors and I am happy to say that I completed the course.  I am now looking at doing a course in script writing in 2014.

As for registering the many ideas I have come up with over the years and realising that I could not run all of these businesses by myself I came up with an idea to register a company which would hold all these ideas and then market them to people who have the passion to want to change their life and in so doing change the lives of others.  I have registered a company called "The Exploding Calabash".  This name in itself was born of a vision I had of a dried up butternut exploding and the seeds are the ideas being scattered and nurtured into successful businesses.  At this point in time I can only hope and pray that come 2015 I will be able to say I have planted some of these seeds and they are well on their way to fruition.

Coming back to where my journey started, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my Romeo for coming into my life as and when he did and the impact he had on my life.  These are my last words (in an email) to him after I told him telephonically that I wanted more than I was getting:

"I tried to call you just to check that you are okay and to let you know that I have no regrets about what we had or did not have.

Life happens and sometimes we just have to roll with the punches. I am sure that if our situation was different then we both know where we would be.

Take care."

It is not until we acknowledge the hurdles that are in front of us, are we able to judge how high we need to jump, in order to move forward.