the truth can be a very scary thing ....

here it is, day 3 of the 30 days of truths about me. this question for day 3 is a doozie ... now, the question becomes ~ how truthful am i going to be out here for everyone to read. sure there are people who read this who know me, or think they know me, but when it comes to a question about what i need to forgive myself for... maybe that becomes way too personal and the things that deep down i need to forgive myself for are really only those things that i should keep between me and, God, if there really is a God out there who knows me.

here goes: question #3 ~

what is something that you need to forgive yourself for?

maybe i am being way too serious and deep with these questions ~ maybe i should just go with the first answer that pops into my head ~ like i need to forgive myself for never losing those extra 20 pounds after having my last baby ~ or i need to forgive myself for not going right onto grad school after undergrad ~ or i need to forgive myself for choosing to work instead of staying home with my children ~ or forgive myself for, well, you get the picture. just sitting here thinking about what i need to forgive myself for i can list probably 20 things right off the top of my head that obviously chip away at me in some way, every day.

but, if this is about soul searching ~ and thinking, when it comes right down to it, what is the biggie (or one of the biggie's) that i need to forgive myself for ~ i would say that i need to forgive myself for choosing to stay in my hometown and get married instead of moving away and trying to make a life for myself, out there somewhere, where i think i would be much happier. the choice to stay here and get married ~ yah ~ i made that choice, but it is most likely the one choice in my life that i have made that, admittedly, the older i get, the more i regret. yes, that choice brought me 3 wonderful, beautiful, smart, creative, and talented children ~ and it allowed me to be close to my family (we all still live in the same town which is sort of unheard of in today's world ) and i do have a nice, comfortable, pretty much stress free existence ~ but in so many ways my life is not what i ever expected or envisioned it to be ~ i am not where i ever wanted to be ~ and i am not doing what i thought i would be doing. hmmmm, see what i mean when i say the truth can be a very scary thing.

you know the movie IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE where george bailey, aka jimmy stewart, asks the angel for help because he thinks that his life is worthless and that he has nothing to live for and he wishes that he would have never been born basically? and then the angel shows him what life would be like in bedford falls if he would have never been alive? well, sometimes, i think if i had 3 wishes (yes, i think in that way and wonder if that could ever happen! ), one of them would be used asking for a glimpse of what my life would have been like had i made a different choice 20 years ago and took a different path in life than the one i chose to take. where would i be living? would i be married? would i have the career that i had always wanted to have? would i even have had children? what would i be like? would i still be this person i am with the same values and beliefs and compassion that i have? what would life here, in my hometown, be like had i never lived here after college?

yes, i would like to see what life would be like had that 1 choice been made differently ~ where would i be now? and, truthfully, that is what i need to forgive myself for... for actually thinking that ~ and wondering ~ and in some ways, mourning the life that i never really had that i thought i wanted. i need to forgive myself for thinking those things ~ because it is human nature ~ and if i have learned anything about anything in the past 4 years it is that human nature can be a very crazy thing to handle at times.

so, since i can't just give back this life i have ~ i have come to realize that i need to try to mesh them together ~ the life i have with the life that i wanted to have. i am working on it and trying to find the way to have some of the best of what both worlds might have to offer ! :)