Courage

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.” 
~Oscar Wilde~

There was a time that I would have been terrified to make decisions because I would be worried of what I thought other people would think of me. Worried about image. Worried about not being thought of well.

Then something remarkable happened. I stopped caring about what other people thought of me and began to care more about how I felt about myself. Best. Decision. Ever.

Not to say that it's not important to live up to the expectations you've agreed to live up to in your life. As a parent. A sibling. A child. An employee. A business owner. A friend. But you can do things on your terms. You can live your life authentically.

There were a period of years when I would rather lie about the state of my life than face the harsh truth or expose it to everyone else. Truths that maybe I wasn't the best daughter, sister, friend, wife and mother. Truths about my ex, truths about my family. I hid my unhappiness, the feelings I had about the Dreaded Ex's behavior, the feelings I had about my own. I felt that if I told the truth my carefully constructed world of deceit about my "happy" life, I would collapse and so would my life.

My little family and I worked hard to overcome that. It's not been easy. Having to muddle through the mess that was made in the 18 or so years of me being married was staggeringly difficult. Debilitating. Paralyzing. I didn't know where to start.

So, I started with the hardest thing. Me.

I have always been a good girl. Not to say I haven't explored and experimented with "stuff" because I have. I mean, who hasn't? But I have maintained quite a few key morals and values that I was taught growing up regardless of what I've gotten into. Being raised in a Catholic family didn't seem to help me either. Morals AND guilt, all rolled up into my subconscious. Joy...

But, I've become brazen and ballsy in my new era of freedom. I don't look at "sin" as I had before. There is still right and wrong to me, but the lines for what I can construe as a sin are different. For me, sin is something that isn't easily forgivable. I can't exactly say that my true nature is filled with sin. It's not. I'm moral. I don't do things that would be considered serious transgressions.

Merriam Webster defines Sin as: 

1

a : an offense against religious or moral law

b : an action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible <it's a sin to waste food>

c : an often serious shortcoming : fault

2

a : transgression of the law of God

b : a vitiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God

Nothing I do would be considered sins in the strictest sense. But, I've become free-er in my choices. Less judgemental of others. I think it's become less what I would conceive as something bad, instead I feel that most people look at what they want out of life and are things that you, as a human being, can live with.

I want to look back at my life and say "I wasn't afraid to try. I allowed myself to become vulnerable. I wasn't afraid to get out of my comfort zone."

Dating men who are younger. Dating men who are older. Allowing myself to experience things I never would have done in my overly structured life.

Why are these things we fear? The most memorable things we have in life aren't always the safe thing. The most memorable people in our lives, are those we aren't afraid to allow close to us although there is a chance we may get hurt. The things we find we are capable of are things we haven't always been able to do because we fear the unknown.

I want to be able to look at everything I do and KNOW I had the courage to TRY. At least once.

A life of regret is one wasted. Everything we experience is something we can learn from or can be an opportunity to learn something about ourselves.

Never be fearful of the unknown. The greatest discoveries are those that took courage. Never be afraid to "sin". Be afraid you don't get a chance to LIVE and learn.