What scares me most was whether I would be able to adult on my own in a new city. Would I be able to navigate finding a new apartment? How would I know what neighborhood to start looking in? How would I get my stuff to the new city? Would I do a good job vetting movers and then interacting with them? Would I be able to find a new insurance agent? Etc.
So every time I mastered one of those things, I surprised myself and then the fear slowly started to fade away.
I suppose this is just a continuation from the separation. I still remember how terrified I was that I wouldn't be able to manage my income and expenses. Even those first scooter rides to choir without someone checking in on me were really scary. And then when I took that first overnight trip, I struggled with even the smallest decisions, like which hotel room to choose during online checkin.
On a rational level, none of this fear makes any sense to me. I am that 20 year old young woman who got on a plane to Spain all by myself. I am that 15 year old girl who sprinted through the Minneapolis airport with my 13 year old sister to make our plane and then got to know the airline personnel really well when snow closed the Grand Forks airport for our return trip and I called daily for updates and eventually rebooked our flights.
I am the woman who even within my marriage handled most logistical things and solved problems. When we moved south, I found our apartment complex and secured the unit we wanted. I found our new insurance agent. I set up our utilities and researched internet options. I was even the one who found the realtor to sell our house and was the main contact to coordinate showings, the final walk through, and then the closing.
When we initially bought that house years earlier upon moving back to southeastern Wisconsin, I was the one that read all the documents at closing and discovered a couple errors that needed correcting before we signed.
So why has my confidence been so lacking since the separation? Why did I think I couldn't do it on my own? Why the fear over tasks I had successfully navigated countless times over my life?
In one of those last interactions we had, my ex-husband told he was going to miss my resourcefulness. Not once before that moment had he ever expressed any appreciation in that regard. I actually often felt he resented my ability to handle things and in hindsight wonder if it was because he felt lacking in that area. He definitely hated when I said anything that even remotely contradicted what he thought was best, especially if what I said turned out to be right.
He needed me to need him. His perception of his manhood was directly tied to how useful he felt to a woman. He actually accused me of emasculating him in that way as we were separating. And although, he never said any of this out loud until we were separating, I think he communicated it in other ways over the years. Because I always had to tip toe around his ego whenever I took care of things. I felt like I had to make him feel like I needed him. Maybe in that process I had convinced myself I needed him as well.
I'm sure society's expectations didn't help either. Women are supposed to need men. We are supposed to be helpless damsels in distress so that a man can come save us. And although I grew up among some very strong, independent women, it still didn't really overcome the overarching societal attitudes.
I had a conversation with a colleague who I see as a very strong, independent woman who shared that she was in awe of someone close to her who had expressed that she didn't need a man to be okay. She didn't seem to have fully reached that belief about herself, at least yet, which surprised me. But maybe it shouldn't when I think about this journey of my own to build up my confidence being okay without a man by my side.
This move is going to be really good for me in so many ways. One of those ways is how it is building up my confidence to go out, do more, be more, and create something beautiful that is beyond what I ever could have dreamed of.
Tonight I'm celebrating with friends so I put on my yellow dress and clipped a butterfly to my hair. Here's to the start of something truly beautiful.
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