What died when my assumptions did

I had an evidence file stuffed with all the bad shit that ever happened to me. These stories felt like oxygen-poor veins circulating bloody mistruths back to my heart. Once they arrived there they didn’t just harden into sadness or grief, they formed into assumptions.

Pumping me full of nonsense that because something happened once or maybe more than once, then I should assume it would happen again. Harmful relationships? Assume there will be more of those. Creative rejections? More will come. Anxious in certain situations? Well, of course those feelings will return. Tomorrow is Monday? You didn’t like the last Monday, you obviously won’t enjoy this one.

My flesh was sliced open and shredded by these blades of assumptions, causing me to bleed out. Plasma, platelets, and cells of self-inflicted distortion leaked out of me. Walking wounded. I was sleepwalking through life without knowing. Couldn’t tell if I had a splinter between my toes or pollen swimming in my eyes. So exhausted was I from the loss of my life-force, I barely noticed the crimson stains of assumptions on my sweater. The silent forcefulness they wield.

Once I realised the hold these assumptions had over me, I did what I always do when I locate an unknown thing about myself. I orgasmed in the delight of its discovery, groaned from the tickle of this newfound aha moment, and felt ever so fondled by the thought of the growth coming my way.

Realistically, I knew there wouldn’t be a non-violent solution to all of this. Sometimes we can journal, ruminate on it in therapy, or voice-note it into oblivion to our closest friends. Sometimes the stories just have to die.

So, I killed my assumptions.

My motive was simple. I wanted to live. This meant that my assumptions could not. This happened many years ago and I’m eulogising it now. I have no four step guide for you or how-to. I decided to make a choice. This choice had one major death, but also birthed a series of daily choices. A choice I still make every single day, to this very day.

I choose to not live in assumption. I choose to live in presence. I choose to live in what is true. I choose to only allow in the assumptions that feel good in my tissues. The healthy assumptions that can create my future instead of eradicating it.

I started to assume that I would live a full, wild, rich, and delicious life because I realised I actually had no reason to believe I wouldn’t. There were many years that I didn’t live such a life and so what? What does that have to do with anything? What does that have to do with today or tomorrow? Why did I ever believe that what was true then, would continue to be true?

You are not what was. You are who you are now. Who you are now is not who you will always be.

Let the rest come.

I would have one bad date and believe I was destined for romantic doom. That it would never happen for me. I would get one email saying no and believe I would live out my days in creative destitution. I would write a whole damn psychological profile on someone based on a text they sent or words they uttered. All because I made assumptions.

Assumptions that would then alchemise into reality. No more dating. Don’t trust people. Stop creating work. Living in misery based on what I thought or expected would happen.

I killed them.

I don’t entertain assumptions anymore. I don’t allow them to gatecrash my party of presence or tell the DJ what to play in the soundtrack of my existence. Don’t get me wrong, they try and each day I check myself by asking this:

“Okay, is this rooted in truth or mired in assumption?”

I remind myself often that I just do not know. I don’t know.
I remind myself that I’m creating a story when it is not yet written.
I remind myself that it hasn’t happened.
I remind myself that today is what matters.
I remind myself that I can allow life to unfold.

I remind myself that I can let life surprise and delight me. That when we live in the heaviness of our assumptions, we forget that this is our first time existing in this lifetime. We don’t know shit about what’s coming.

There is such magic, potential and possibility weaved into each 24 hour cycle.
Waiting for us to believe in it.

Even when our hope has been stolen. Our faith kidnapped. Trust shut down. We have to believe that there is life waiting for us. Our proof? Look around. Not at the yeses you are waiting to hear. The money you’re waiting to drop into your bank account. The relentlessness you’re waiting to dissipate. The heartbreak, poverty and disaster around us. Look at the everydayness of life. The small, simple beauty of it all. The vivid green from trees and leaves that serve as our beacons. The birds flying through cities, villages, and towns. Rainbows and peonies. Human eyes and insect feet. The music of laughter and song. The fact that your heart is beating. Still. Persistent. Continuing.

A life so spectacular that it is actually beyond comprehension.

Assume there is good, because we are surrounded by it.
Even when our hurt causes us not to see it.
We don’t know what’s coming.
We don’t know. We just don’t know.
The future can’t be seen, because we aren’t in it yet.
What has happened to you before is only proof of what has happened to you before.
Not what will happen.
You can’t read someone’s mind. You can’t see into someone’s soul. Don’t make assumptions out of them.

If you can assume the worst, there isn’t anything stopping you from assuming the best. Don’t worry about being disappointed by things not happening, by hoping they will. Speak it into existence.

If it doesn’t happen something else will, you just can’t see it yet.