If you care enough...

Recently I learned the word FUBAR. It isn't a word as much as an acronym. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. Fubar. Simple as that.

***

My secret fear is that I wake up one morning and find I am forty years old, five kids and a husband under one arm and a career under another, and realize that I had done nothing with my life. And being forty with responsibilities other than those just to myself, I have no choice but to stick to the path I had paved, and that the possibility of crossroads has been taken from me forever.

And for the past three years I have been at the crossroads: one fork leading to security and what everybody expects of me; the other, to possibilities. (Possibilities. This word is enough to give me goosebumps.) This week, I finally stopped lying to myself and took the leap towards the unknown, towards those possibilities.

Now, I'm half excited, half scared out of my wits, but I tell you, I've never been this alive and this at peace. I remember a Kundera novel I read a long time ago--Identity, I think--and there's this part where the guy's sitting under a tree and he looks at the branches stretching into the infinity of choices. He thinks to himself--If I'm going to end up sticking to one path all my life, why should I stop from exploring other branches, since I know I'm going to end up traveling that single road soon enough?

So, that's how I've been feeling for so long. Confused, lost, terrified. Confused about what I wanted to do with my life. Lost in the tug of war between secure boredom and true living. And so terrified of the mere existence of other possibilities for me, that I fucked up my life for a year, so much that I hardly recognized myself. Now, I'm just glad I finally faced that decision; now I feel I can actually start to get to know myself again without all the surrounding bullshit muddying up the waters. But hell, whatever I tell myself, it's still difficult to face the fact that, right now, I'm not being what people expect me to be. That a lot of people will think I'm being stupid, ungrateful, indecisive. Crazy, in a word.

However, if you care enough, you will worry about me, and worry some more, but admit to yourself that my eyes have not shone like this in a long time. That I haven't smiled so sincerely, laughed so exuberantly, or been this motivated in a long time.

If you care enough, you'll know that I'm taking time to explore, so that I can wake up that one day when I'm forty with responsibilites up to my neck, smiling and saying that I made the right choice of all the possibilities given me.

If you care enough, you'll stop working out reasons why you wouldn't even think about trying anything like it, but figure out why I had to do it.

If you care enough, you'll admit too, to yourself that life isn't short at all, rather it is much too long not to take the occasional detour--if only to find out where you really want to be. Because both sides of the coin hold the truth: Life is too short not to take chances, and life is too long to spend regretting them.

Even if you care enough, you probably won't understand; but then you'll know what I mean.

***

Now that I know, I just don't want to look back at my life and think, Fubar. Simple as that.