Why burning down my 'successful' life was the best thing I ever did

It was a Thursday back in February 2018. The rain hadn’t stopped for months and London was right in the depths of what felt like the longest winter we’d ever had. The dark, damp days had started to getting to me so I’d taken refuge in a hot yoga class to warm up. The scent of palo santo blended with the sweat of 50 people pervaded the room. It was bonus day at work. They’d told us it had been a bad year and not to expect much. I peaked into the envelope, hopeful, as soon as they slid it across the table: £130k. But there I lay, in savasana, with hot, salty tears streaming down my face: I’d never felt emptier.

‘You’re so ungrateful’, I thought, as I walked down the stairs of the studio out onto the street, ‘Georgia’, by Vance Joy blasting in my ears. ‘You just got paid £130k and you’re complaining… what is wrong with you… you should be happy’.

But I wasn’t happy was I.

My therapist told me I had dysthymia, some form of low level depression that just persists forever. Some part of me felt relieved for her telling me; there was something wrong with me, thank god. But then the hot veil of shame enveloped me. Nobody else had this. Everyone else seemed fine. How could I be depressed when I had literally the most privileged existence imaginable. Who the hell am I to complain, what with my overpaid job and nice flat in zone 1. Stop complaining Lucy, get a grip.

I woke up the next morning exhausted, an emptiness spreading right underneath my ribs. There was a Sandro sale on. I bought a few £250 dresses on the tube on the way to work in an attempt to feel better. Check out complete. All I felt was guilt. What the hell are you doing Lucy? This cannot be your life. This cannot be it, can it?

You’ve worked so hard for this life. You have the life you wanted. This is what you wanted. This is what you are meant to do. Remember. You are the smart one. This is what’s been expected of you. This is who you are. Why aren’t you happy. Why isn’t this life making you happy?

A few months later I found myself at a yoga retreat, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Italy. I’d booked it on a whim, in some pathetic attempt at self care. One morning, after breakfast, I was sitting with Louise, another guest, nursing some peppermint tea and my third piece of toast, when the owner of the retreat, Tatiana came down to sit opposite me.

‘How are you, Lucy?’, she asked. ‘I’m all good’.

‘It’s interesting because, you say that, yet all I see in you is a brittleness - like all I’d need to do was push you a little, and you’d crack’.

I felt a lump form in my throat.

‘How are you really, Lucy?’

I burst into tears. Why was I crying. I didn’t understand. The tears kept coming.

‘I thought so’, said Tatiana ‘Lucy, you know I’m a trauma therapist..? I’d love to do a session with you, if you’re open?’

The lump in my throat dropped right in the pit of my belly. Fear. At that moment, something inside of me told me, if you take this one step forward, life is probably never going to be the same again.

I turned to Louise and said ‘I shouldn't do this, should I, I mean, I’m not traumatised, I’ve had a great life, there is nothing wrong with me.. so.. it would be weird to do this, right?’.

‘I think only you know the answer to that, Lucy’, she replied.

I sat down with Tatiana that day and my world changed. Having not cried properly in over 8 years, the dam had been breached and there was no way to stop the tears.

I had no idea why I was crying, but crying I was. Non stop. For hours. Through that session, it suddenly became clear to me that the world I’d been existing within was somehow not the truth. I didn’t even really know what that meant at the time, but it felt so clear to me that the pain I’d been feeling, the sense of loneliness, of confusion and self doubt, wasn’t anything to do with my life; it was to do with whatever these tears were about.

The world changed colour that day. I opened my eyes at the end of the session and the Italian countryside looked brighter somehow, more hopeful, as if I was seeing it properly for the first time in my life.

After that trip, life moved. My google searches shifted from ‘why am I single?/should I leave my job?’ to ‘how to heal’. I started reading books about trauma healing. I went to sound baths. I found an EMDR therapist. I started breathwork. I started, for the first time in my life, to listen to my intuition and signed up for a yoga teacher training. I was prioritising myself and it felt good. Even though it felt scary to notice that I was losing certain people from my life in the process, life suddenly felt infused with possibility. Potential. Openness.

Almost a year later, I turned 30. My birthday fell on a Monday that year, I’d taken the day off work to celebrate and invited over a couple of people who were deeply important to me on the Sunday night to close out my 20s properly. Except, they had misunderstood my invitation and ended up cancelling at the last minute.

I spiralled.

Down.

And down.

And down.

The air was suddenly heavy. It crushed my chest. The air got heavier and heavier until the tears came. Uncontrollable sobs. Heaving. Wretching. I couldn’t see.

That night I cried myself to sleep. Pain searing through me. Why did nobody care about me like I did about them? Why did I always show up for other people and nobody does the same for me?

The next day, puffy eyed and exhausted, I walked to Primrose Hill and sat down on the sloped grass coming down from the view point. It was a sunny June day, and there were people jogging through park but my heart felt heavy. As I sat, looking out over this city that I called home, the tears pricked my eyes. Sobbing, all I could think was ‘If you keep going like this, you’re going to lose everyone in your life, this is making you worse, not better’

My 30th birthday was one of the hardest days of my life. That day was the day where it felt as if there was no way out. That maybe all this soul searching and digging was actually doing me more harm than good. That maybe there wasn’t another side to this pain and it was time to turn back.

I went back to Italy three weeks after that day. Back to a retreat. After the pain of my 30th, it had become clear to me that there was no option to go back, I had to move forward. I had to commit to this journey. I had to keep searching.

That week in Italy, through the yoga, the breathwork, the deep conversations over long lunches and even longer dinners, life moved me. The dust started to settle and for the first time I started to see myself more clearly.

This pain I’d been harbouring for so long, the angst, the confusion, the doubt was the pain of living a life that wasn’t mine.

It was the pain of choosing every twist and turn of my life based on whether or not it would make others happy, whether or not it would make others proud, whether or not it would keep others in my life.

I was stuck living a life that wasn’t mine. A life that was so far from what the truest version of me wanted, that all that version of me could do was scream from the depths of me through pain, through angst, through fear, through anxiety, through confusion to try to get my attention. My self betrayal had started slowly, small yeses to things that were really a no, and had culminated in huge life choices, jobs, partners, homes that weren’t chosen based on my own view of success… but on everyone else’s.

From that moment, I embarked on a journey of slowly unwinding all the decisions I’d made that weren’t truly mine. This meant firstly facing the crippling fear I had around disappointing others as I started to define what success meant to me . It meant leaning in to the terror of asking for four months off work to re-assess where I was going. It meant accepting that in asking for that time off, the veneer of being deeply committed to my career, would disappear and thus my career trajectory, would plummet. It meant taking a huge leap of faith to join a group of 20 strangers to travel around South America. It meant accepting that my 6 figure salary wasn’t ever going to make me happy, however many Sandro dresses it afforded me. It meant quitting my job with no idea what was next. It meant trusting that life had my back when I left that job in the middle of the pandemic. It meant leaving my home of 5 years. It meant letting go of relationships which weren’t meant for me. It meant deeply and fully redefining what a successful life meant to me and committing daily to creating that.

Five years after I found myself sobbing on the floor of a yoga studio, my life is almost unrecognisable. I’d moved from London, to Mexico City, to Cape Town. I’d started a business. I’d deepened into my own healing. I’d found passion in the small moments of life. I’d found meaning. I’d found purpose. I was no longer swimming in a life that was defined for me by everyone else, but I’d finally found what it meant for me, to lead a successful life.

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