Someone Else Made the Best Decisions of My Life

Which is why I'm taking my finger off the trigger for 2025

Photo by Astrid Schaffner on Unsplash

I can’t work out if I’m about to write the most infantilising, disempowering essay of my career, or if I’ve begun to crack a new code which will hopefully offer tonic to anyone looking down the barrel of the new year. Let’s see how we go.

At the tail end of 2024’s edition of seasonal overindulgence, I got into a DMC with a girlfriend about a crossroads ahead in her life. Her angst was unmistakeable and deeply familiar. I could feel her sleepless nights of turmoil on my skin, the whirl of constant rumination leaching enjoyment from even the best days. One of the biggest challenges of adulthood imho is accepting that we cannot board all ships. Watching opportunities and lifelines wither away as we set our compass to diverging trajectories can be profoundly unsettling. So many of the fundamental decisions we make are between two things which we would probably be quite happy to do. There are other lives which I’m sure I would have found fulfilling, or at least full of pros as well as cons. But this is the one I chose. Or did I?

During our conversation, as I examined my own pivotal moments, it began to dawn on me that I actually didn’t make many of the choices which have defined some of the most important junctures of my own life. My first husband left me, my magazine boss cut my contract. I’ve moved geographical locations because my landlords have terminated tenancies or increased the rent beyond the pale. It took me three years to sell the only flat I’ve ever bought—in that instance I felt zero agency in the process whatsoever. I will maintain that my current husband chose me rather than the other way around as I am 100% his type whereas he was a real outlier (though not the only oddity in my little black book as I’ve metaphorically dated a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker). In some of these instances, I have been passive and allowed fear or indecision to paralyse me into spineless inaction. I could and should have left lots of situations before I was tossed out on my ass.

I probably should have worked out my own type rather than waiting to be someone else’s.