The Road Not Taken

Another semester has come and gone and I finished with my fifth consecutive 4.0 semester and the promise of a paper getting published in the near future. But my pride in my achievement isn't the point of this blog. The point is how I finally learned how to stop being down on myself and start being my own number one fan, and that's a lesson far more valuable than any grade ever will be.

Let me back up a bit.

For a long time now, I have been obsessed with the idea of what I "should have" done with my life. I "should have" plugged straight through college right after high school. Okay, so I hated college ten years ago, but so what? In my mind, it didn't matter that I hated it, I "should have" done it because in the lineage of life, it was the thing that was supposed to come next, therefore I "should have" sucked it up and kept going. I have spent the last three years absolutely hating that I have to worry about homework and tests when I had a family to take care of. I "should have" been putting every last ounce of focus and energy on them, and none of it (or at least a minimal amount of it) on myself. There was a way that I "should have" been living my life and I wasn't. As far as I was concerned, you only get one life and I was messing mine up. Royally.

Here's the thing. Deep down, I know that there is no right or wrong way to live your life. But knowing that on an intellectual level and actually believing it are two very different things. I've spent a lot of time beating myself up, looking regretfully back to the past, and generally feeling less than good enough  because I was absolutely convinced that I was living my life the wrong way. I hated telling people that I was still in school and that I was only just getting around to earning my bachelor's degree instead of a masters or a PHD. I dreaded the "what do you do?" question because I hated saying I was a student, like I was a carefree nineteen-year-old instead of someone who ought to have it together by now. I wasn't supposed to be a student, I was supposed to be the next Tina Fey by now! And because I was so down on myself, I assumed (absolutely wrongfully) that everyone else was down on me too and that people thought I was stupid or unmotivated for being where I was in life. Worse, I felt that by putting so much of my time towards school and by extension towards myself, I was doing my children a grave injustice and not giving them enough of my time, attention, or even love. I would lie awake at night, imagining the awful day somewhere in the future that my kids would come to me and tell me that they wished I had been a better mom, that I hadn't been so selfish and self-absorbed and had managed to get my act together sooner in life.

I never once thought for a minute that my kids (or anyone else in my life, including myself) would ever be proud of the fact that I was working really, really hard and trying to accomplish something more. When I first went back to school, I killed myself for my grades, not because I cared and wanted to feel accomplished, but almost as a penance for my prior scholastic offenses. It took a long time for me to realize that I was punishing myself for a crime that I never committed. I was so blinded by my perceptions and negativity that I couldn't see how much love and support I actually had around me. If anyone would express happiness or pride at my hard work or grades, I would assume they were just being nice and didn't mean it. I have no idea why I thought this or why I continuously came down so hard on myself when I was surrounded by nothing but positivity. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't feel good enough.

The point of all of this is that I know I'm not alone. I think a lot of people beat themselves up for not living their life the "right" way or the way they had planned, but maybe great things can come from being thrown into situations and having to fight your way out. Only recently, I have realized that this whole concept of  "should have" is bullshit. It doesn't exist. We trick ourselves into thinking that there is a right or wrong way to life your life and that there is an order that you are supposed to follow. I've realized over the last year that "should have" is nothing more than a lie we tell ourselves for no other purpose than to make ourselves feel really, really bad for absolutely no reason at all. It took a long time, but I got tired of working hard and still feeling terrible. The only person who was being hard on me was me and eventually I decided to stop living my life that way. The past belongs in the past and the "what if" game is pointless and harmful to any kind of life that you are tying to live. That much I know is true.

I've finally (FINALLY) realized that going back to school doesn't make me selfish or a bad mom and that thinking that those things are in any way connected is nothing short of outrageous. I realize now just how proud of me my husband and kids are, but how proud of myself I am. I'm proud of my hard work, dedication, ambition, and let's face it, kick ass time management skills. I may not be taking the easy road in life, but "easy" and "right" are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I'm not lazy or stupid, I'm just a late bloomer and there's nothing wrong with that. Earning a degree while juggling two kids, a husband, and a job certainly isn't the easy way, but that doesn't make it wrong. I know now that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. And that's an amazing feeling. 

 I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 
~Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken 

Real Life Lara Croft

I never really write about celebrities, but I wanted to say that I take back every snarky thing that I have ever said about Angelina Jolie. She's amazing and let's face it, I was probably just jealous when I said those things anyway.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

This morning I got on to Twitter to find my feed clogged with slightly varying versions of the same screaming headline: Angelina Jolie Gets Double Mastectomy. I'm not hugely into celebrity news, but this shocking headline was coming at me from every direction of my social media life, in all-caps with excessive exclamation points. So, like the good little internet sheep that I am, I picked a link and clicked on it, which led me to Jolie's post in the New York Times. In a nutshell, Jolie carries a gene called  BRCA1 (which she refers to as a "faulty" gene) that puts her at a ridiculously high risk of getting breast and/or ovarian cancer. Rather than sit around for cancer to strike, she chose to be proactive and had a preventative double-mastectomy. She briefly described the surgical process and why bothering with any of this at all was important to her. I sat dumbfounded at my computer, as all of the work I had planned on doing this morning came to a screeching halt. I read the article, cried and then reread it and cried harder.

I thought the best part of the piece was when Jolie wrote about how she watched her mom suffer through cancer and knew firsthand what a horrific thing it would be for her kids to endure. Her mom was only 56 when she passed away and if that was the case for me, that fact would always be hanging over my head every single day. Jolie wrote that she would do anything to get more time with her children, which I relate to for obvious reasons. I would undergo surgery to become the next Wolverine if it meant I got to spend 30 extra seconds on this planet with my kids, so yeah, I get it. Overall, I felt like this whole piece made her seem so human, less like the perfect, leggy movie star and more like the mom who loves her kids and would do anything for them. And there's nothing not to love about that.

I'm sure that a preventative double mastectomy is a ridiculously expensive procedure, which most of us probably wouldn't be able to afford (though I'll spare you my liberal, tree-hugging opinion on the state of health care in America...for now). But if having a preventative double-mastectomy could significantly decrease your risk of breast cancer, would you do it? Is this taking advantage of the awesomeness of modern medicine, science, and preventative care or are you just playing God? Just some food for thought.

Either way, I feel that I have a whole new respect for someone that I (wrongfully) blew off as just another Hollywood actress gazillionaire. It might sound cynical, but people don't surprise me very much sometimes, and it's nice to be proven wrong (in a good way) and also to remember that what you see on your TV isn't the full story. My mom always said that you "never know what goes on behind closed doors" and that lesson applies here perfectly.

Above all, I think that both having the surgery and writing about it was brave, honest, and downright bad ass. Like a real life Lara Croft.