Do you remember the movie Titanic? James Cameron’s 1997 romantic disaster film that made every woman in America ugly-cry into her popcorn?
When it came out, I was 24. I was in love. I was mesmerized by Jack and Rose – the forbidden romance, the “I’m the king of the world” moment that’s etched into our psyches, the weeping flute and constant reminder that the heart will go on, courtesy of Celine Dion.
She made him feel like the king of the world, and in return, he gave her everything -including his life. It was the stuff fairy tales are made of. And at 24, in love, and full of hope, I ate it up.
That was almost thirty years ago.
I’ve watched that movie probably a dozen times since then, and I need to tell you something: I don’t watch it for the love story anymore.
What I Watch For Now
There’s a scene near the end… after the iceberg, after the panic, after the lifeboats are gone and the water is rising – where the band keeps playing.
The ship is sinking. People are screaming. And these musicians pick up their instruments and play a hymn while the deck tilts beneath their feet.
They play until the water takes them.
Now, you can look at this two ways.
You can say they chose to die doing what they loved – that in their final moments, they made music instead of chaos, and that’s beautiful.
Or you can say they were so locked into what they’d always done that they couldn’t process what was happening. That instead of fighting, instead of swimming, instead of grabbing a door or a piece of debris and holding on – they defaulted to the familiar. They played because they didn’t know how to do anything else.
I used to think it was the first one.
Now I know it’s the second.
I Was the Band
For years, I kept playing.
I stayed in a marriage that was sinking. I smiled through situations that were pulling me under. I kept showing up, kept performing, kept pretending the deck wasn’t tilting, because that’s what I knew how to do.
I told myself I was being strong. I told myself I was being brave. I told myself that holding it together WAS the brave thing.
It wasn’t. It was denial with a soundtrack.
The brave thing was letting go of the railing.
What Jumping Actually Looks Like
I’d like to tell you I was Beyoncé-brave when I packed up my life and moved 8 hours from everything I knew. I wish I could say I was Cardi-confident, relocating at 46 with an autistic son, no safety net, and a bank account that made me nauseous.
But I can’t.
I was terrified. I cried in gas station parking lots on the drive. I second-guessed myself at every mile marker. I wasn’t financially ready -are we ever? And I definitely wasn’t as emotionally prepared as I pretended to be.
But here’s what I’ve learned since then:
Hard is not the same thing as bad.
Read that again if you need to.
The move was hard. Starting over was hard. Building a new life in a place where I didn’t know anyone, while raising a child who needs me more than most kids need their mothers, while rebuilding my health, my income, and my sense of self – that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
And it was the best decision I’ve ever made.
Not because everything worked out perfectly. It hasn’t. Some days I still feel like I’m treading water. Some days the deck still tilts.
But I’m not playing a hymn while I go down anymore. I’m swimming.
The Part Nobody Talks About
Here’s what the movie doesn’t show you: the people who jumped.
Not the ones who went down with the ship – the ones who hit the freezing water and kicked. The ones who grabbed debris. The ones who swam toward the lifeboats even when their lungs were burning and their legs were going numb.
Some of them made it. Some of them didn’t. But they all chose to try.
That’s the part of the Titanic story that matters to me now. Not the romance. Not the band. Not the beautiful, poetic, graceful way people accepted their fate.
The ugly, gasping, desperate, refusing-to-quit people who chose to live.
That’s who I want to be. That’s who I am now.
Your Ship Doesn’t Have to Be Sinking
You don’t have to be in a crisis to make a change. You don’t need an iceberg to give yourself permission to jump.
If something in your life isn’t working – a relationship, a job, a city, a version of yourself that you’ve outgrown – you don’t have to wait for it to go under before you move.
You can put the instrument down. You can stop playing someone else’s song. You can step to the edge of the deck and look at that cold, terrifying, wide-open water and say: I’d rather swim than sink.
It will be hard. It will be scary. Some people will think you’re crazy.
But hard is not the same thing as bad. And scared is not the same thing as wrong.
The band played on. I don’t anymore.
If you’re in the middle of your own jump right now – or thinking about making one – I see you. Drop a comment below or send me a message. I’m in the water too, and it’s warmer than it looks.
