Open Road Song

The dominating thought after imagining "what ifs" was not a desire to follow a road not taken. I'm not longing to undo the past or redo my choices. There are days that I want to know the endings to all the lives I didn't choose, but I will never know if they would have been better. Besides, what good would it do me to know? I cannot go back. Only forward. 

I was struck by the sheer number of choices I once had available. Almost limitless. Life was an open road, both figuratively and literally. I could have gotten in a car and gone anywhere as long as I had enough gas. I did just pick up and go a few times, taking unplanned adventures with friends, or escaping to the mountains by myself.

I moved to Austin with no job, knowing no one. I could have gone anywhere. I had my pick of the undergraduate offerings of a prestigious university. I could have studied anything, become anything. The future was vast and fluid.

Awaking to my current life, I felt the inexorable advance of the walls closing in around me. Choices no longer possible, roads closed off by decisions of the past. I have only very rarely felt this way as a stay-at-home mother, but I know many other women who feel trapped in the role. For me, family has been my ambition. With Katie starting kindergarten, however, even that path is closing off, narrowing in around me, about to disappear.

In so many ways, it feels like my life is over, winding down. But it's only one chapter. Or maybe one book in a series. I am only 38. I am literally at the midpoint in my life expectancy. I guess that makes this my midlife crisis. It's time to start the next chapter in my life, and coasting on my current path is no longer an option. 

I am at a crossroads for the first time in over a decade. It is freeing and terrifying. Do I revisit old dreams, resurrect the past, right wrongs and regrets, or try to find something new? I am worried I will pick the wrong thing, that I will look back in another twenty years and list all the things I should have done differently now.