What’s Your Bus?
I thought love was the one thing that deserved patience, not force. That the fighter in me had no business showing up there. I was wrong.
On March 24th, I had a quiet earthquake of a realization: I have to couple my trust for life with my fighter spirit. Not just in career, not just in ambition, but in love, too. I had been treating the two as separate categories: one where I push back hard, and one where I wait politely and hope for good timing.
Mr. International is the professional fighter of the two of us. But I kept forgetting that my spirit, at its core, is a relentless champion. Anything I have ever wanted out of life — any wall, any mountain — I have faced with force. I got to the other side every single time. It was naive of me to approach love any differently.
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I heard Alex Honnold, free solo climber who treats fear as information rather than instruction, joke in an interview that having a partner is like hiring at a company. You find the exact skill set you can't fill yourself.
That might not be a cold way to look at love. It might be one of the most honest ones. Mr. International helps me become the absolute best version of myself: the worldy one, the one who is madly in love with life and all its adventures, who says yes, who knows exactly who she is.
And here is the issue I have been quietly sitting with: my future job is posing the most significant threat to the timeline of Mr. International and I ending up in the same geographic coordinates. I've been wrestling with the awareness that I am an independent woman moving for nothing and no one but her highest self, and, simultaneously, I am deeply in love with someone overseas and cannot picture a life with anyone else.
I know I'm young. I know I'm not settling down any time soon. But I am deeply aware that he helps me become the version of myself who wants to take on the whole world. He encourages me to go get lost in it, because in case I ever forget who I am, there is someone who knows me down to my deepest depths. I can rely on him to remind me of the woman I was yesterday, today, and who I will be tomorrow.
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My upcoming internship first manifested sophomore year, right before I went abroad. The company was and still is a dream. But one very important development — falling in love while abroad — became a complication. The company is only national. Initially, not a problem. Now, quite a threat.
I had been resisting this tension in the name of being responsible: follow the grain, secure the full-time offer, put my head down, tell our love to keep waiting until I'm an associate. And maybe that's exactly what happens. There might be real value in those years of living alone, taking on Los Angeles, taking everything there is to take from an experience that once encompassed my entire dream life.
But when I wrote When do we jump the wall? last week, I remembered something: I am designing this life. Which means I am also creating the situations that are keeping me waiting. By deciding to trust what I "think" is lined up for me, I'm pulling it toward me, whether I'm fully in love with the idea or not.
The piece I had been missing is not to throw away a beautiful opportunity in front of me. It's simply to fight it a little. To tell life who I am, how I love, how I look at the world when I'm dreaming, not when I'm being "realistic."
And then, this morning, I had a call with a mentor from an international bank. I started explaining my dilemma. He asked if I'd seen the news.
On March 30th, six days after I wrote When do we jump the wall?, the world responded. A major international bank is rumored to be acquiring the national company where my internship/future job is. They have offices in Barcelona. On Calle Via Augusta, 9 minutes from where Mr. International lives.
When I shared the news, he had just finished two skydiving jumps. No adrenaline come down just yet — he marveled: "Wow... the world is literally opening up for us. How is this possible?"
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A few hours after I learned all of this, my sister came into town.
She has an offer to attend training camp at West Point, one of the most significant honors a person can receive. But she is weighing everything that comes with it: the lifestyle, the commitment, a medical journey she just came through. We spent the afternoon talking about how impossible it can feel to know how much these dreams of ours are going to cost. How do you decide to pay a price you can't fully see yet?
Later, I took her to her first power flow yoga class. The instructor mentioned people were running late, so while we waited, she turned to the room. She told us to find the person next to you and answer one question: Do you believe in predeterminism or free will?
Then, as we moved into the vinyasa, she told us a story. She said: In life, we pray for the bus to come pick us up. But most of the time, we find ourselves running after it. And sometimes, even then, we miss it.
She asked: what's your bus? The thing you're praying for, but also willing to fight to not miss.
Our eyes were supposed to be closed. We were not supposed to move. My sister and I grabbed each other in disbelief.
Because what are the odds? Six days after writing When do we jump the wall? — a rumored acquisition, my sister at her own crossroads, and a teacher in a yoga studio asking the exact question we had both been living inside of.
Whether this acquisition goes through or not. Whether West Point is her answer or not. Whether any of it unfolds the way we are hoping, I know something now that I cannot unknow.
This whole life is really just a test of how big we are willing to dream, how willing we are to fight back, and how demanding we are that we get the best outcome every single time.
The bus is coming. Stand the hell up and run for it.