Stuck

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Why am I stuck? What is preventing me from getting off the fence and making a definitive decision, and moving forward in some direction? I think I’m starting to develop some answers. However, I’m not so much liking the answers, and I find myself fighting against them which I believe is what I’ve been doing all along just without realizing it.

Doing what is right is not always easy. I almost always look for, and choose, the easy way out of things. Choosing the easy path rather than the right path is not the answer for long term happiness. I have spent most of my adult life choosing the easy path. Hence I find myself in the mess I’ve made for myself. Had I been faithful to following the right path rather than the easy path, my life could have been much different. Truth be told, following the “easy” path has, in many ways, made my life more difficult than was necessary. Many times in life I have failed to make any choice at all which in and of itself makes the choice for me.

I just let life flow past me as I wait for. . . what? What am I waiting for? A lot of it is certainty. I want to know for sure that I’m making the right choice. I don’t want to look back and see another wrong choice made so I put off making choices for fear of making the wrong one. Fear is a big factor, not only fear of making a bad choice, but fear of the unknown. Again I’m looking for certainty. I want to know for sure how it’s going to turn out before I make the choice. But guess what? There are no guarantees in life, no way to know for sure how things will turn out. So I wait, wait to make the choice until there is no longer a choice to be made because the opportunity has passed, and others have made their own choices, and I am left to deal with the consequences of others’ choices so that I can have someone else to blame when things turn out poorly.

So here are the questions I need to answer for myself before I make that big choice to leave W permanently, or to stay with him:
1. How much risk am I willing to take that N will be negatively impacted by the divorce vs. the negative impact of staying with parents who have a strained relationship?
2. How much risk am I willing to take that I may regret not staying with W and caring for him for the remainder of his life?
3. How much risk am I willing to take that I may regret not pursuing my own happiness by staying with W?
4. Will I be able to live with my conscience if I abandon a man who professes to love me and need me?
5. Would I be willing to leave W if I did not have someone else to turn to, if the choice were between being with W or being alone?
6. How willing am I to work on reconciliation with W?
7. How willing am I to accept that life with W would mean choosing to be celibate or choosing to continue with clandestine affairs?
8. Given that I have seen W making efforts to improve how he deals with N, am I willing to risk that relationship to pursue my own happiness?
9. Can I make the choice to stay without continuing to agonize over it, question it, have this same crisis in my head repeatedly?

I see one choice that I could make, to leave W, as a selfish one. It would be a choice that I feel like would be saying my happiness comes before all others, and to hell with the impact it has on other people. I see the other choice that I could make, to stay with W, as a selfless one. It would be a choice that I feel like would be saying that I value other things more than my own happiness. It would say that I value the vows that I took, that I really do take seriously the commitments I make. As I write this I realize it all comes back to seeing one choice as bad and wrong even though it is what I really want to do and the other choice as good and right even though it brings tears to my eyes when I consider resigning myself to it. Which choice can I live with?