Yesterday, I pictured myself getting up from my seat in the desolate pizza parlor, walking right out it's front door and right into the
traffic on the six-lane state highway just outside.
I'm not suicidal, not even really in a rut.
I'm listening to my kids playing the video games, my husband standing watchful over them. I sit alone at the table and tear my straw wrapper to shreds, and I wonder.
I wonder how it is that life turned out like this, how I could realize what my purpose was, and then realize its too late? Here I am, stuck on the corporate ladder. Climbing. Successful, most would say. But I would trade it all in the blink of any eye for a shot at my
dream.
It's the commitment to that dream, and the realization of how far behind I am in obtaining it, that causes my soul the kind of
pain that makes me fantasize about walking into traffic. There are days when I
wish that all I had was enough, that I could live with myself if I spent the next thirty years in the same shoes I'm in now.
But it isn't enough, and that is a truth I live with from the
moment I wake up, through every client I see, and to the moment I fitfully lay my head down to rest.
There's a fire here, that starts in the pit of my stomach and works its way through every synapse in my skull, and I can feel it engulfing me - eating me alive. And I know I have two choices. I can work for it, or I can walk out into traffic, so to speak.
How do you live a dream, accomplish a dream, reach for a dream - when everything you've done so far is on a completely different road? It's like standing on the bank of a
river too deep and treacherous to swim, seeing something you love on the other side with no bridge in sight, no way to cross over. What are your
options? You could chance the river and drown. You could stand there and look at the object for an infinite amount of time while you grow old. Or you could find some way to build a bridge, or a boat... or something. None of the options will keep you from pain and heartache.
So in my pizza parlor, there I sit. Perfect family. I am blessed. I wish that were enough for me.
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