Choosing to Leave

Is equal parts hard and liberating. It is the muscle of beginning and ending. A tug and a push. A pull and a levy. The dam may break. I may break. It will be okay. I will be okay. What other people think doesn’t matter. I can trust myself.

There will be a moment when you know. When it becomes so clear that you must make a single choice. To choose you or to choose the system where you are no longer able to exist in your truth. The thing you are leaving may be sticky or loose. It may be a career. Or a husband. Or a city. Or a family of origin. Or something else. But you know. You always know. When it is time. You have worked hard to shush the longing telling you so. To shove it way down into the pile of permissions not granted. Who are you, when you have so much, to want something else? Why do you get to step out of the norms that everyone else is adhering to? Or are they? Why does belonging seem to come more easily for them?

Sometimes we wait until we can no longer undo all the tightness of the stories we have spun. Images of who we projected ourselves to be in order to belong in places not crafted for our best self. For a time, I believed compromising my wants, needs, and desires was the easiest path. I feared conflict and not being liked. I swallowed my spirit whole because they – those people surrounding me – had none and I wanted to fit in. A casualty in the path of my own denial.

Finding myself in a place distant from my truth. Stuck in the place where I thought I was supposed to be. It looked fine on paper. Seemed logical enough, this job, this man, this community. Isn’t this what everyone does? Until they don’t. Until they say no thanks, not for me. Not this time. This time I choose else. I choose self. I choose. The power of my choice versus my obligation to you – whoever you are - career, boss, colleague, friend, child, husband, religion, city, state, country. Leaving means whatever “this” is, is no longer what I choose.

What I know about leaving … there is no right or wrong choice. Letting go of the fear of choosing wrong. Letting go of the voices that are not mine. Letting go of the cap I put on choice. Giving myself permission to choose again. I am not a fickle girl because I change my mind. I may be here again. I am learning and unlearning. I am exactly where I am supposed to be.