Publicly, and even with good friends, I laugh off my paralysis about making big decisions. "I can over-think anything." I pretend, without saying so explicitly, that my discomfort with big decisions is just the shadow side of being smart. I think too much.
Well, THAT'S obnoxious. This psychological deflection is because I am avoiding harder truths, but it's still obnoxious.
So I am publicly admitting that I do this rude thing and that I will stop.
For the rest of this reflection to make sense, you need to know a bit of the back story. I stayed in a marriage that was abusive and emotionally crippling. At first, I was afraid of what might be on the other side of ending the marriage; uncertainty kept me there. Eventually, though, the abuse worked. I was grateful to be in that dark marriage because I believed he was right about me. I was entirely certain that I couldn't survive on the other side. The thing about walking that path with an abuser is that he needs a strong opponent to feel strong himself. Once I was no longer strong, I was used up. Being discarded was inevitable. And I lied about it - to myself and everyone else. I spun a tale - quite an effective one, as it happens- that we were happy and healthy and having fun. I desperately needed that to be the story.
I have feared big decisions and uncertainty for a long time -possibly always- and apparently to the point where I will hide behind untruths to avoid confronting them. Who is this crazy woman?? And of course, that fear led straight to the heap of woe that doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict. Had he not left me, I would still be in that marriage, I am quite sure of it. Generous, loving friends have tried to reframe what I did as loyalty. I stayed because I am fundamentally a good person, the story goes. Thank you, dear ones. I love that you see me that way, but I stayed because I was paralyzed by uncertainty and fear.
Obviously then, there is no lack of evidence that paralysis rooted in uncertainty does not serve me. And yet.... I am doing it again, and this time without the excuse of an abuser in my life. This time, it's on me. There is a nagging feeling and mounting external evidence that it's time for me to make more life changes, and I'm resisting. Who's surprised? This time, though, I have the advantage of knowing that I can survive disruption. It took lots of people lots of effort, true enough, to get me through that first disruption. But eventually I was strong enough to take over the work myself. We're here now, and it's better than "there" ever was.
I also know a little about how I got through that disruption; I now have a skillset of a sort. I took baby steps. Absurdly small steps sometimes. But forward motion is forward motion; even small steps set a trajectory. My job right now is just to take a step forward, not to have all the answers. Nine years ago, I could not have envisioned this marvelous life I now have. Literally, I did not have the tools to even imagine the changes I have experienced. I knew barely enough to take baby steps away from terror and pain. This time, all I have to do is take steps from the marvelous vaguely toward the more marvelous. Even I - fearing uncertainty as I do- understand that this moves takes less courage than the first one. Baby steps.
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