Courage?

When I got my first divorce, several new friends at IBM told me how courageous I was to walk out of a miserable marriage. I didn't feel I was courageous. I felt the truly hard thing to do would have been to stay with that marriage and somehow make it habitable, make that man start treating me with respect. I didn't want anyone in a shaky marriage to look at me and say, "Jan did it. I can, too.", and therein find the impetus to just give up on the marriage.

I tend to think of myself as plain and ordinary, forgettable, a simple person. Maybe that's an outgrowth of the conservative, Bible-thumping upbringing. Maybe it's an outgrowth of being raised by a mother who grabbed every opportunity to cut me down. At this point in my life, I do know that I'm a really loyal friend, highly honorable, possessor of a strong work ethic, and someone who doesn't give up easily. (I stayed in that marriage ten miserable years before getting up the guts — er, courage? — to leave. I truly tried to make it work, but it takes two . . . .)

So now I have a chance to reinvent myself. I've made some gutsy résumé moves lately — I've applied to positions at Second Life (secondlife.com), Google, and Harpo Productions. There's an IRS position in Cincinnati I'm going to apply to. There are no limits. I know I really want to be nearer the babies, but I also know I'm not ready to retire. If I'm going to start over in another city, I need to be connected in some manner in order to make friends. Without that social interaction, I will just shrivel up and wilt. So I look at jobs all over the nation, then I look at airline schedules from that city's airport to the Pittsburgh airport.

And suddenly yesterday it dawned on me. What I'm doing is very courageous. I imagine most 56yo single women in my position (decent job, nice house, lots of friends and community connectedness) would just stay where they are and say, "that's life" if their beloved children moved away.

But what is this for me? This is an opportunity for growth, a much-needed chance to stand back and look at myself more realistically, not through the don't-think-too-highly-of-yourself filter of my childhood. Truly, the world is my oyster!