Crazy Talk

I realize this sounds crazy talking all about “meant to be” and “supposed to be” but I really feel like I’m being led a certain way.  Not like a cow being led by the nose but as if I’m being shown a way to go. I still feel kind of crazy with this.  One evening when the kids were asleep, I’d finally allowed myself some pain meds, and Mike and I were relaxing in the living room. I just blurted this all out.  I cried while I told him.  Not because I’m sad but I think because this is all happening to me at a very emotional and intuitive level.  I actually didn’t tell Mike the whole quit my job part.  I started with the lighter “I’m thinking of cutting my hours back” version.  My scientific logical husband could have said so many things.  What he did was listen nod his head and then said, “you know, you could volunteer at B’s school next year and then maybe write a book”.  Seriously!  Seriously!

It was like the clouds parted and the sun came shinning down on me when he said that.  I asked him if he felt resentful at all about me “finding myself” while he works 12 hour plus days at Intel.  But he said he pretty much likes what he does and likes his life.  When I think about it he also had time to do this, to figure out what he liked earlier in his life.  So much of my twenties were about survival.  My thirties were about learning balance, about being healthy and creating family.  What if this right now is my time?

It All Started With The Boobies

I was an H cup.  I’m a D cup now.  I’ve been having this weird kind of epiphany since I’ve had my breast surgery.  Since I began work last September I kept having this feeling, really it’s more like a phrase that I keep hearing in my head.  When I drove up to work I heard “You are not supposed to be here”.  At first I brushed it off and attributed it to beginning of the school year nerves.

After all, I had a great job.  I designed the program that I ran.  I had a lot of freedom in my job.  I made good money.  I’d been working for the school district for 14 years.  This was my career, my degree and what I did.  So I brushed it off.  But each day, each week this phrase felt stronger in my brain, “You are not supposed to be here”.

It was not a freaky thing.  Not a scary crazy voice that requires medication.  Just this calm, clear, steady voice: “You are not supposed to be here.”  Just that.  So I went to therapy because really this seemed to warrant therapy and I know how I am and how I can be.  I wanted to check in, make sure I wasn’t going a little wonky.  My therapist just smiled when I told her this.  She thinks I need to trust myself.  She thinks I don’t need her for “ego” control any longer.  I mainly use her for a “do you think this is crazy” check in. Which I think she finds a little amusing but not in a bad way.   She suggested that perhaps my next move was to have in my mind the question, “What should I do?”.  I asked that question for a month .  Before bed as a prayer.  When I drove up to work as a question, “If not this, then what? Because what I do now really seems  like the perfect job for me.”.

Then my surgery came up.  It happened at the time I didn’t want it too or planed for it too.  The only thing I did know is that the surgery was something just for me, kind of selfish and something that would put other people out.  I tried really hard to get it at a time that might  be easier but in the end I had very little control over it.  Being forced to not work freaked me out.  I panicked. Panicked. I tried to figure out why I panicked.  Mainly it was about me being lazy,  letting my job down, letting staff down, letting my boss down.  More than that it was about people thinking badly of me.  That I was a  slacker. That I wasn’t a producer. It was this gut level thing.  In the end though, when my doctor said I couldn’t work for two weeks.  I felt a huge sense of relief.  Some of that was because I was physically so tired, but some of it felt like room for me to think more about the idea that I’m not supposed to be doing what I’m doing.  Again I wondered,  “if not this, then what?”