I don’t know

This is by far, the hardest thing for me to admit… I don’t know.

Survival. The most primal driving force behind every motivation.  How do I stay alive?

For me the answer has always been certainty.

I grew up with a sense that I must “know” what there is to be known in order to live properly. I must understand the ways of the world beyond a question of a doubt. Surely all of the adults around me seemed to know. They walked around acting and talking like they knew. They gave short one-sided answers, and taught from printed books with pictures, and graded answers on tests with “right” or “wrong”. Everything seemed outlined and defined and surely someday, when I knew enough, I would also “know”. Knowing was the way to get places in this life. Knowing was the way to be successful and confident. Knowing was the way to be alive.

For me, the certainty I’ve come to long for the most is certainty in love. My parent’s love was not dependable, it wavered according to their state or mood and according to whether or not I was pleasing or displeasing. I felt I had to know who and what I could be depending on what they were able to tolerate. Feeling any deep emotion was threatening to my parents because they feared their own emotions. Sometimes I was able to be myself, and other times I needed to hold back and contain so as not to disturb them or threaten their sense of “knowing”. I learned to hide the parts of me that were seemingly “too much” meanwhile secretly longing to be free.

I found freedom in alone time, in music, in daydreaming. As a teenager I spent hours on my rooftop staring at the sky, dreaming of the day I would be free. I always felt that day would come when someone loved me deeply. When I found my true love, then I would be whole, then I would be fully embraced, then I could be everything I am, without fear. It always seemed to work out that way in fairy tales. Happily ever after, right?

Since then, I’ve spent my life searching for a guarantee in love. Thinking that only within certainty would I find true meaning and significance.  That only when I was certain, would I feel safe, happy, connected, free. Give me the answers, show me the way, give me a star to follow, somebody or something to cling to and only then will I be able to be who I really am.  Yet time after time, the more attached I grew to these ideas of certainty, the more I had to create delusions to give myself this feeling of “knowing” I so desperately longed for. Some people do this through a religion, or culture, or politics, or any strong belief system. How did I do this? By falling in love at first sight, many, many times.

Of course if this “one true love” existed, I would know who he was when I saw him, right? He would walk into a room and I would just have this feeling of “knowing” in my body that confirmed without a single doubt that he was my soul mate. The one, and only. That he had come to save me from insecurity, to save me from uncertainty, to give me the love I felt I’d never had. Time after time I re-created this very scenario, unconsciously choosing someone I felt a strong attraction to to be “the one”.  But time after time this illusion was shattered. And damn, it hurt like hell. Why was I so surprised that these guys didn’t turn out to be who I thought they were? Why did it never pan out? Because in wanting so desperately to “know”, I was far from seeing what really was.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s always been uncertainty in my life that I’ve been able to deal with. I moved from Mexico to the U.S. when I was 16-years-old, then I moved to Los Angeles on my own when I was 18. I chose to follow my dreams to become an actress, a singer/songwriter and a writer, so based on my chosen endeavors, need I really say more? Even in love, I came to a point where I felt a tiny bit more comfortable with uncertainty. This was when I entered my first serious relationship. Thomas, let’s call him, was constantly reassuring of his interest in me which gave me security even though I never had certainty. I knew we had the basics: attraction, connection and commonality, so it was worth a shot. Unfortunately though, after 10 months of growing in intimacy, he wrecked havoc on my heart. I found out he cheated on me the entire relationship and was totally devastating. It turns out I was really hurt by something I didn’t know was happening, and after that, I proceeded to blame myself… “I should have known better”.  And out of self-protection, I decided I would never be uncertain again, because hell if anyone was going to hurt me like that again. I would find my true love and I would “know” and I would “get it right” next time. And that’s what I set out to do 5 years ago now.

Yet in the process, I unknowingly found myself further and further limiting my perception of reality. Limiting it to what I “knew”, to what felt safe for me to “feel” and “see”. Some unpredictability was nice, but overall, I was seeking a sense of security. I needed so desperately to believe in something indisputable, that I created it.  I created it in romantic relationships.  Some imaginary, some impossible, the rest mostly unfulfilled and unfulfilling. The problem with being so caught up with a need to know is you don’t and cannot see what is. You miss out on your life. You miss out on truly loving other people. You pigeon hole yourself into a limited version of reality. You start to die.

Imagine how dissatisfying my life became as I set my mind to know, to seek certainty and find it, and then everyday I didn’t find certainty just felt like another day I failed. The more I wanted certainty the farther it seemed to be. I tried to cling to past beliefs and ideas and I wanted the world to fit the beauty of my vision. I was floating and ungrounded. I was lost and more confused than ever before. Wasn’t there supposed to come a point in adulthood when all my work paid off into a feeling of security and knowing? And wouldn’t this likely be rooted in some sort of prince charming that came along to save me?

After months and months of a bitterly disappointing disconnect between my dreams and reality, I had no choice but to invest in therapy and yoga and searching. A couple more broken hearts later, I finally surrendered into a great deal of breathing into what is.

What I’ve come to find is that my expectation that if only I “knew” it all, then life would be without struggle, without doubt, without fear, is terribly and unequivocally incorrect. The feeling that I am an inadequate human being because I don’t “know” it all, because I’m not sure how to “handle” everything, because I have emotions that are out of my control, is a complete and utter misunderstanding. And love? I’ve done it all wrong. I approached dating as a search for the fulfillment of my ideas and expectations. Looking for someone to fit the script I wrote in my head instantly, completely and unquestionably. Looking for someone to give me unconditionally the absolute security that he would always love me. Well crap. No wonder I’ve been single most of my life.

Somewhere along the road I picked up this idea that until I “knew” everything I would not really be good enough or be able to live my life fully. Instead I am discovering that the more I long for absolute certainty, the more I realize how uncertain I am. And it’s the mistaken belief that certainty will bring me freedom, that makes me seek to latch on to it, when really the opposite is true.

All this may sound ridiculous. The truth is, it is. But the other truth is that it’s the illusion or game of the ego, and the ego is very persuasive. It isn’t until the ego drags you through enough pain that you finally choose to step out of it. But it’s very scary to step out of a lie of “knowing”. Most of us would rather feel certain in a lie, than uncertain in the truth.

We all need a certain amount of certainty (pun intended), but for me it always felt like my life depended on it. I rarely felt secure as a child. I learned early on that if I didn’t take care of myself emotionally, in whichever way I was capable at the time, I couldn’t be sure anyone else would. This has kept me from being truly open with people, truly vulnerable. From seeing who they really are, because who they really are is always outside of what I “know”. In fact, you cannot ever fully “know” someone. It’s in the erroneous belief that we do “know” others, that our judgements and preconceptions take over and our relationships begin to shrivel, or at the very least, grow stale.

And so given this hard life-lesson, I can honestly say that in some ways I am dating for the first time in my life. I am learning to spend time with men, not choosing them to be “the one”, not trying to figure out or know if it’s going anywhere, but just getting to know them. Learning to see them for who they really are and to be open to being surprised. I am learning to trust my instincts, and to listen and pay attention to what I do know and feel, but over all, be ok with what “I don’t know”. And you know what? It’s actually kinda freeing.

Today, I stand before you, more uncertain than ever before. If you spoke to me at 18, I was so certain. I thought I knew it all. Perhaps I couldn’t tell you how I was going to get there, but I sure as hell knew where I was going. Today I have shed so many masks and so many identities, I stand before you as a human being grounded in mystery. A person that has talents and flaws, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, but overall, I know not where I am going, I just know better who I am.

by Ellie Araiza