my life

It's been an interesting couple of months.

My dad has always joked that one day, when we were ready to upgrade, they'd just buy our house from us. Their schedule got shifted, however, when he suddenly decided to retire earlier this year and they made plans to move here this coming spring. There just happened to be a house on the market-- 7.5 acres with a pond, 3000 square feet, in need of some tlc inside but nothing we couldn't handle-- so husband and I decided to take a look, just out of curiosity, with the plan of my parents buying our house from us. One thing led to another, and suddenly we were meeting with a mortgage lender to figure out numbers.

But, as life goes sometimes, we missed it by a day. It had been on the market for two years, and all the sudden two couples were interested at the same time, and they won.

I was heartbroken. I was already decorating it in my head, already living in it. Though it was going to be a financial stretch, I thought that's what we needed to do. One afternoon, feeling heartbroken but almost kind of relieved, I was looking around our house and had a revelation: if we actually tried, our house could be nice. If we got rid of the college furniture and cleaned up the deck a little and saved some money to redo the kitchen, we'd have a nice house. And what in the world would we do with 3000 square feet anyway? It's just the two of us and will only be the two of us for quite a while, if not forever. I like our house. I like the colors, the layout, the bathroom, the large yard, the neighborhood. Why go anywhere, really?

I think we were trying to keep up with the Jones'. Several of our friends have moved recently, and I think we were feeling left behind in our 1500 square foot "starter" home. What I forgot is that we are not just another Jones, we are us. We are different, we do things differently, think differently, and have different wants and plans for our lives. We don't need a bigger house, we need a bigger life, and buying an expensive house is only going to keep us tied down instead of out actually living.

So we're going to live. Monday we went up to Memphis furniture shopping, and this week we have given away both the college-era TV stand and the cheap torn-up couch. We have a new couch, rug, and tv cabinet, all very stylish in our own tastes, not anyone else's, and we're waiting on husband's new Stickley recliner bow-arm chair to be made and delivered. We are then going to start planning our new kitchen to be installed in the late spring, probably with concrete counters and a large wine rack. We've also decided to start saving for another trip. We're thinking Vienna this time.

We have good jobs and freedom, so we might as well enjoy it. Yes, there is a balance, and retirement saving is also happening. But I'm not going to hoard every dollar only to get hit by a bus at age 60, never having actually lived my life. My mother's best friend died last week, a stroke at 60. Last time I spoke to her, she was talking about our Italy trip and how much she wanted to go and how she'd get there eventually. Eventually is a luxury that we're not all going to get. Some people, like my friend's wife who was killed in the car wreck earlier this year, or a former coworker who died last month from pneumonia of all things, don't even get to see middle-age.

I think it's a sickness that people have, especially women, to live for someone else. We let other people make our decisions for us, push us down a certain path, toward marriage then children then retirement then, eventually, if you're lucky, some free time, then death. What if my path looks more like college, marriage, travel, adventure, career growth, exploration, charity work, possibly children while the rest is still going on, then, eventually, death. My eventually becomes death itself and not the life I want to live.

All of this has led me to the realization that I want to live every day. I already knew that, but the things that have happened this year have solidified it for me in a way that will affect my decisions from now on. I'm not going to do what other people think I should do, what is normal, what everyone else does, just because they say so. I'm going to make my own decisions and walk my own path. I don't want to live anyone else's life. I don't want to adhere to anyone else's standards. I only get this one life, and I might as well be happy in it. When I'm my parent's age, I don't want to look back and regret the things I never did; instead I want to look back and think, "Wow. Look at the life we have lived," while looking forward to more.