What If Today Was the Last Day of Your Life?

My life is silent in a chaotic sort of way these days. The past ten months have been an excruciating mix of painful and pleasant experiences that have left me in a cloud, incoherently gliding through life. I've let my actions determine my decisions rather than moving myself toward a chosen goal. I guess I can't beat myself up too much for my passiveness, I mean it's been a pretty effed up year and there's been a lot to keep me preoccupied.

About three weeks ago the cloud began to lift. My tears dried up allowing me to see clearly and I looked around at my life and began to wonder, "What am I doing?"

There is a lot going right in my world. My kids are healthy and happy, I have a wonderful guy that loves me more than I deserve or understand, there is food on the table and a pair of seriously cute jeans in my closet. I just can't shake the feeling that something is seriously missing.

I see myself standing in a dark and empty room. It's MY room, the room where I'm supposed to be happy, safe and secure but all it feels like is a holding cell, a triage of an emotional hospital. In front of me are countless doors. I can walk through any door that I choose and finally make a change that will start a ripple effect for the rest of my days. I am being suffocated by fear. Fear of choosing the wrong door, fear of causing damage to those on the journey with me but mostly terrified by the thought of staying in that room.

There are faint voices all around me, the majority of them coming from myself. "You're a single mother; you're going to screw up your kids. You can't do it all alone. You're crazy for wanting to make a major change with the economy so bad. You're so ungrateful. You're not good enough to live your dream. You'll never make it. You're going to fail…"

I've checked off the major life headlines (as Tiffany calls them, see her blog I've Got A Fever). I've done the marriage thing, bought some real estate, had a couple of babies (one of each gender) and held onto a good job for nearly a decade. Now as I look forward from my 27 year perch I wonder, "Is this all there is?"

Of course I have my children to look forward to and I don't want to seem ungrateful for them. They are growing up and changing so fast and they are the biggest joy in my life. But for me, is this it? Is THIS what I wanted to be when I grew up?

A wise man once said, "If you set a five year goal for yourself and never start moving toward it, in five years you're still going to have the same goal but you'll be no closer to reaching it."
Today I'm not exactly sure what I want that goal to be, but I do have a dream and I have a feeling that dream is on the other side of one of those doors.

One thing I've learned the hard way this year is that life is too short to wait. What if this bleak and rainy Wednesday was the last day of my life?