“I don’t want it to be 10 years from now and wishing I had left 10 years ago.”
This is the thought I had in the shower one morning when my marriage was quite literally circling the drain. It was the moment I knew what I had to do, though I didn’t yet have the courage to do it.
By all appearances I had a great life. My husband was successful in a lucrative field. We had a beautiful custom-built home with a pool on 10 acres that we shared with three dogs. There were cars, a boat, and a trailer. There were trips and events, including luxury hotels and extravagant meals. And I was lucky to pursue a career that didn’t need to support us financially. I had a comfortable life, to say the least.
But there was something missing and that something was me.
Losing my way
Throughout my life I had been pressured to be different than how I was. In one way or another, who I was wasn’t good enough, didn’t measure up, or didn’t fit in. For a long time I resisted, which caused no end of frustration to those who thought I should be different. I fought the good fight for decades but over time, after giving in a little here and giving up a littler there, my battle lines had been severely compromised. I was exhausted from the fight and I gave in.
That’s when the trouble really began because in giving in I gave up the most important thing—me; the me that makes me the unique soul I am in this world. I gave up on my true nature and lost myself in the process. The pale and false versions of myself—the me others expected me to be—that had been lurking around the edges for years finally got their foothold. And when I lost myself, I lost my way.
Finding my way home
When I first read the poem “The Journey” by Mary Oliver sometime after my divorce, I couldn’t believe how exquisitely she had captured my own journey of personal salvation. These lines in particular were like an arrow to the heart:
“… But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
Letting go of that marriage was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life to that point. I had loved him for 16 years and we had, in a lot of ways, grown up together. He had been my family, even more so after both my parents had passed away. I knew I would miss him but I knew with even greater certainty that I couldn’t live that life anymore. It wasn’t my life. I knew that staying in that marriage in an effort to keep from hurting him was only hurting me.
And so I saved the only life I could save. Mine.
It is now the 10 years later I portended in the shower that day. This month marked the 10th anniversary of me choosing me.
There’s a saying that sits on the bookcase in my office that reads:
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about remembering yourself.”
And that’s what I’ve done. I’ve spent the last decade letting go of those old, false versions of myself to reveal my true self and find home within myself again.
Ten years later, I’m still choosing me.
Are you choosing you?