Los Angeles

Ten years ago, I applied for and was offered a job in a suburb of Los Angeles.  I can’t help but wonder if there is something about the me of ten years ago that is making me pause longer than I expected on this LA job that was posted yesterday.

I wasn't looking to move until that Atlanta job was posted last August.  And then that activated something in me to dream bigger.  So I have a list at my desk of districts that have lost their investigator and I have been weighing in my mind what it would take to get me to leap to something new.  

California wasn't even on that list.  But it was ten years ago.  And I wonder if this posting this week is a trigger or the right opportunity or both, I suppose.

Ten years ago, LA was about pleasing my ex-husband.  It was about supporting him in a dream that I knew was a terrible fit for him.  It was about shrinking myself to fit into the fantasy he had of himself.  And even a drastic move like getting a job in one of the cities where the job he thought he wanted would send him wasn't enough.  He blamed me to the day we separated for not supporting him in that career path.  That's wild to write it out like that.  That's delusion on top of delusion.  It's a reminder that no good at all came out of shrinking myself for him.  It hurt me and it never was enough for him.

If I had accepted that job ten years ago, it would have been a job I hated in a city that made my ex-husband even more miserable than he already was.  

So how does that relate to today?  I feel like I'm still trying to figure out me and where I fit.  Sometimes my gut reaction is to do the opposite of what the shrunken version of me thought was best because I don't always know where else to start.  But is that always the right path?  It's worked out a lot of times but this is a pretty drastic move.  This isn't quite so low stakes as signing up for improv class.

There might also be a piece of me that wonders where that path would have taken me.  Throughout life, we face so many crossroads and we never get to know where the opposite path would have taken us.  And although this isn't the same path as it was ten years ago, it almost feels like a parallel path.

Finally, sometimes I feel like I have to keep proving my capabilities to myself, as if I don't believe I can navigate a life on my own.  I know that sounds crazy with all I have accomplished in the past year and a half but it's a real feeling that maybe we all have.

Regardless, I need to tease out these other motives and find a way to focus on what might actually be best for me, not because I need to prove anything or explore a parallel path, but because this is the path I should take in this chapter on its own merits.