Breakthrough


Ever just had it? Just felt like you can only do so much and no more, and yet you know that it's just not good enough? Somebody or something always suffers, and sometimes that's just not acceptable. But what do you do?

Looking back over my life, I see that I have always just gone with the flow, rarely making major life choices but rather just taken the easiest route. About the only major decision I made was to leave home at an early age...from there I just sort of wandered through life, generally doing what was expected of me but never sure if it was what I really wanted. But, I mused, it would do, at least until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. And amazingly, there are very few things I would go back and change, if given the opportunity. Here's a favourite poem that sort of says it, far better than I can:

Looking Back

There is no single day
or time
within the life
I've so far lived
that I'd have changed
or altered.

Possibly there are some days
I could have missed
and never missed,
but I suspect that I could not
have come down to this place
a different way.
As I suspect that being here
I don't as yet know where I am.
Rod McKuen
So don't get me wrong, I am not beating my chest and saying, oh if only I could go back and change things. I would not. (Well...except maybe the tattoo thing, that was really dumb...but I digress). But the point is that I still don't know where I am. And over the last year or so, things have really begun to overwhelm me. It had become where every day was just a struggle to get through, get it over with, then get up and do it all over again. I had come to hate my job (which I used to love), lose patience with my children, cry a lot, and just generally feel that I was not coping well with anything. Adding to that came a few new stresses - family illnesses and such - and I think I was brinking on a nervous breakdown. (Does a person know when they're going crazy? All I could think was, I'm losing my mind, no I can't be, because I wouldn't know it if I were...but if I were, I think this is what it would feel like...etc., etc.) It's a very scary feeling.

So I thought it through, tried to figure out how to reduce the stress in my life, spent three hours talking long distance with my dearest friend in the world, and finally came to the conclusion that I had to quit my job. It is the only stress in my life that I had control over. Now, for me, this is a major life choice, one of the few that I have made. I've worked since I was 15, held 3 part-time jobs while going through high school (and still made the honour roll!), and have never stopped since. Except of course for maternity leave, which can hardly be counted a break! So it was not a decision lightly made.

Interestingly, my husband had come to the same conclusion and in fact suggested it to me just as I was trying to work up the nerve to tell him that I had decided to do it. Putting myself in his shoes, I don't know what I would do if this person whom I love were falling apart before my eyes. I hope that I would have the same insight and willingness to sacrifice the things we are about to give up.

So the long and the short of it is, I am about to be an unemployed stay-at-home mom. Which I'm sure will have its own unique stresses and difficulties...but I'm willing to give it a try. My kids deserve to have a mom who pays attention to them when they talk, not some distracted chronically-depressed part-time mother. It'll be nice to have the time to cook some real meals, to try to get to the bottom of the laundry heap, to actually get some housework done.

I can't see myself necessarily being happy in this role forever; I am sort of used to having a paycheque and interaction with other adults. But I'm going to give it a shot for a couple of months, see how it goes.

And maybe along the way I'll figure out where I am, and where I'm going.

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