A Choice

Oh my good golly, miss molly, I am going to do this. I am going to go country dancing. I haven't, for those of you keeping track, done such dancing things in, oh ages and ages! What??? But I am going.

I will say I don't want to, but I have to.

Why, you might ask, do you have to? You don't have to do anything.

But I say I have to.

And here is why. I thought, long ago, that moving and changing would get me out of my comfort zone enough that I would start to meet boys and date. Anyone who knows my history in the last eleven years knows that I have moved states five times in eleven years! It turns out that you can move all over and be in all sorts of situations and still, no dates. Or, well, no long term relationships. There, that's more true. No committed long term loving and being loved relationships in that period. Even though you thought changing up your circumstances would help you find what you were looking for.

Because...it turns out that you can still find a cave to hide in. Here is the cave list:

1. Virginia: television and Papa Johns.

Honestly, there was no cave, at first. Just a plethora of friends and new friends and activities and institute. Then it happened one day. I had two really fantastic roommates who were trying to always always get me out of my shell. But there I was, in front of the t.v. on a Saturday night - almost every Saturday night. I shut out the world by choice.

2. Las Vegas: heartbroken + plenty of nice girls = no boy zone.

I mean I was gutted. But I was social in Vegas. I just had no confidence that I would find love. None. And I didn't want to. So I became the best girlfriend a girl has ever had, i.e....lots of hanging with "my girls" without the boys around. No effort at all went into finding guys to hang out with. Didn't even try.

3. New Jersey: the ever present LAW SCHOOL + wonderful little apartment all on my own = the most perfect excuse to just hang at home without anyone!

This might have sufficed for the first semester. Might...I mean, I was adjusting to law school and that is difficult and you do study your brains out - literally. I think mine might have started leaking out of my ear. But I let it become the excuse of all excuses. How silly and ill advised to let anything, no matter how "all important" and "rigorous", take over you life. Let's call a spade a spade. In some ways, law school was just another way for me to hide.

4. Texas: My brother's house

Do not get me wrong. I loved living there. I loved being close to my nieces. I can still hear little Julia waking up in the morning and calling out "Aunt Shelly! Aunt Sheeeeelllyyyyyy!!!" My heart breaks just a little when I think of her waiting for me. I honestly did believe, though, that if I went somewhere that wasn't a "singles mecca" that I might find what I wanted. You know the definition of insanity. It's doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result. Since I'd lived life in four areas with huge LDS singles populations, I thought maybe I needed to go somewhere where I wasn't surrounded by it. I mean, my brother, Abe, met his wife while in the military and living in Fayetteville, North Carolina. So you know, she's beautiful and such and you can find really quality people when you aren't smack dab in the middle of singledoms major oases.

5. Utah: My parent's home

Now here is the end of the line and the reason I made the choice to go dancing. My parent's house is probably the quickest way to a rut I know. I mean, coming home and living in your old bedroom and oh, boy, I'm going to say it, living off of your parents and their good and lovely graces when you're thirty-five, well, that is a disaster waiting to happen when it comes to ruts. I'm in one. There is no way around it.

But, if I turn down the opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and go dancing on a Thursday night with my friends. Well, then I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, it isn't location, Michelle.

Because it isn't.

Really, what it is is an unwillingness to try. I can say oh boo hoo! I dated all that time and no one came along into my corner of the world, so now I'm going to call the game for rain (you knew I was going to come back to baseball, you just knew I would! Even if I'm not sure it even makes a tight metaphor here, which it doesn't, but it's baseball, and I refuse to change it!).

As it turns out, it wasn't where I was living physically on a map or who I was living with or without. I didn't try. I said no to so many invitations to get out and do things. It was, therefore, where my mind was mentally. I think somewhere, deep in the recesses of my dear and broken heart, that I wanted the UPS man to deliver my husband to my doorstep.

Well, now that I am in this situation? Like it or don't, I have to say yes . I have to say yes even if I feel like staying home and watching the Rangers play baseball. I have to say yes when I want to squash my face into a big old piece of pizza from Papa Johns. I have to say yes when my warm bed sits upstairs, and I can go and lay down and sleep at a decent hour.

It's a choice, yes. But then it is not.

I have to say yes to country dancing.