The Second Day of the Rest of my life

Okay....so during a conversation yesterday, I was lamenting how I feel very lost right now and my internal GPS system doesn't seem to be working. I was going on about how for the first time yesterday, I was hit with the true reality of my situation...or at least my situation as I see it. I was given a week off yesterday and while most people would jump at that...I wasn't all that thrilled. For the first time since my mom passed away, I had no real distractions. And then reality hit like a ton of bricks. In the last two months...I went from having a full-time job as mom/homeschool teacher, a full-time job as caretaker for an inferm parent, and a steady source of income from a full-time job that on most days I really liked what I was doing (just not all the politics and grant writing). I feel very much unemployed. I don't know what to do with myself because for so long all those things have defined who I am. So, I was trying to share that sentiment with the people around me. I had several various conversations looking for someone to have just the right words to help me grasp what I was feeling. In one conversation I made a joke and said, "If I were a man, I'd find a 20 year old bimbo and buy a corvette." The response I got was, "If I were a man, I'd buy a corvette too." Considering he is a man....didn't really help much but, what did I expect. He has always been certain about who he is. It is very clear cut for him and black and white because unlike me that is the world he lives in...damn...me and my shades of gray. I talked to someone else about this feeling of uncertainty about my own identity and I really felt like she understood more of where I was coming from. She reminded me again that my kids will always need me because I am "mom" and no matter how old they get or how many miles separate us, I will always be "mom" above anything else. Okay, so I know that part of my identity is safe and sound. I am moving toward acceptance that how they need me is changing and it is good for us all. It is what I have spent the last 14 years doing...preparing them for these moments in their life where they are the ones guiding their futures and making their decisions. Now, I have to sit back and let them spread their wings a little and know that I've given them what they need to fly. Whew! That's a relief. I'm still mom....but what about the rest? As I said in a previous post, I don't know how not to be the caretaker for my mom. It has defined me and my life for so long. I based a number of life decisions on being able to take care of mom. I'm not resentful or angry. It just means now that she isn't here, I don't know what to do with my time. When I finished the last few things at work yesterday and began my week off, I was totally lost. I tried to turn on that internal GPS and figure out where do I go from here and it kept wanting to reroute me and send me to mom's. There is no "mom's" any longer. Her house is being lived in by someone else now and her things are gone and the last 38 years as I have known them vanished in the blink of an eye. I was almost swallowed by the profound sadness I suddenly felt. So, I took a breath and tried to figure out, "where do I go from here?" I was amazed at how much of my identity and value I have turned over to other people and other factors in my life. I tried to regroup and focus on the challenges I face in my career...again, you know those from yesterday's post. I sat at my computer scrolling through various job boards and I realized...for the first time in my life....my career opportunities weren't limited by making myself available for being a caretaker for mom...or for being a "mom" myself. I took the other jobs I've had in the past because they provided me with the flexibility to be all those things and now that the slate is clean, I finally have to figure out, "what do I want to be when I grow up?" I don't think most people really have that issue at 38 but, well, I'm not most people. I envy Barbaro's angel for this...she is so clear on what she wants out of her life and has mapped her course, set her GPS and I don't see anything derailing that dream. She doesn't feel the "mom" bug like I do. She is able to distance herself from the emotional bonds and while some ways that makes me sad, it also make me happy that she is comfortable that way and is following her own path. So, back to my story, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. The possibilities seem endless and quite overwhelming at times. It goes back to that fear of the unknown. It is hard to leave a job I've been at for so long and to start all over somewhere new. Since Atlanta, I'm not keen on being around people I don't know well and that plays a huge role in my insecurity for lack of a better word. So, I was trying to relay all this to someone else and something he said really struck me. He said I needed to "figure out who I want to be". Wow, for the first time in a very long time, that decision really is up to me. That is a daunting thing. I made some smartass remark about what the hell did he think I was trying to do and he followed that up with the quip, "Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life." In that moment, it hit me. The life I had just a few short months ago is gone. Again, like after the assault, I'm at a crossroads of defining who I am as a person. If you scroll to the bottom of the page and read the Jodie Foster quote, you will understand why I really like it now. So, today is the second day of the rest of my life...and today, I feel like I have started on a new path, a new journey filled with a little optimistic hope and excitement of not knowing just where I will end up and where life will take me. I want to grab hold of that optimism and not let go for a little while. I have to or I will get lost in all of the loss I'm facing at the moment. I keep telling myself all those coloquial sayings like, "Everything happens for a reason,""When one door closes another opens,""It is always darkest before the dawn." So put on your seatbelts, buckle up tight, grab the "oh shit" bar and hold on for the ride of my life!

XoXo
Pandora