The Hardest Part

“The hardest part of life is the place in between the knowing and the doing.”  -Glennon Doyle

My gut knows what I need to do, but then I over analyze using the constructs of what is the “right thing” to do.  

I have let the “right thing” override every single instinct I’ve ever had in my entire life.  I am constantly searching for answers.  I’ve even resorted to buying a deck of Tarot cards to try and get someone, anyone, to tell me what to do.  The thing is, all along my gut has known.  

When I am in utter despair, and I think through my options, one of them will make my insides jump with glee.  But that option is often the one that isn’t right for anyone else involved in the situation.  That choice would require me to disappoint someone and I am so incapable of doing that that I fall on the sword and choose the option that doesn’t rock the boat.  

I had such a chaotic childhood and I swore that my children would not grow up that way.  I made a thousand decisions over the past 30 years that were right by the standards of society and my family.  I cannot deny that I have reaped many benefits from this.  

In giving my children the childhood that I’d always dreamed of, I also gave myself a stable, steady home with plenty of food on the table and yearly trips to Disney World.  I was able to be at home and raise my children and pour every ounce of love and support into them that I needed when I was a kid.  

But I became a shadow of the person I was born to be - a smiling ghost floating through time marking X’s on a calendar that never runs out of days. 

My children are grown up now, and guess what?  They saw right through me all along.  They knew that I loved them, and that I made choices for the benefit of the family.  But they also knew there was a yearning inside of me that I ignored.  

It got to the point where I didn’t even really have any dreams anymore.  Every time I would think of something that made me feel warm inside, there were too many reasons not to do it.  

My husband would say that I had a wide-open road and could have chosen any lane I wanted to, but that is what many men think.  They think that women have all the choices in the world, yet my husband doesn’t even know what size shoes our kids wear or what time the bus comes to pick them up. I was doing the absolute most I could do and there was no time to indulge myself.

My kids don’t have abandonment issues like I did, they didn’t change schools 5 times, they didn’t live through divorce and loneliness.  I gave them a solid foundation, showed them how to build a stable, consistent, reliable life.

Now that I stand at the precipice of the second half of my life, I see that my kids missed out on having a colorful mother.  A mother who fully lived.  I was pleasant enough, happy enough, nice enough but enough was not enough.  Not for me, or them.  

In 6 months, my youngest child will be heading off to college.  I have no more excuses for ignoring my instincts.  There are no more swords to fall upon, no more choices to be made that aren’t truly my own.  From now on, I only hurt myself with the decisions I make, there is no one to be a martyr for.  I am in the hardest place of all, the place in between the knowing and the doing.