I Was Ready... Life Wasn't

Defeat. You prickly bitch of an emotion. 

Not as a wife. Not as a mom. Not even as a business owner.

Just... me.

I've been carrying that feeling around for the last week and I finally decided maybe I should quit trying to outrun it and just let myself sit in it for a minute.

Last Monday I walked into Paul Mitchell so excited I could hardly stand it. I had already built the whole thing in my head. I could see the treatment room. I could picture the clients. I could almost smell the skincare products. I was ready to pay my admissions fee and start this chapter that I had convinced myself was finally, finally mine.

For the first time in a really long time, something spoke to me in a way I haven't felt before. It wasn't just, "Oh, that would be fun." It felt bigger than that. It felt like every part of me was saying, *This is it. You found it. This is what you're supposed to be doing.*

Then life did what life has become annoyingly good at doing.

It humbled me.... for the umpteenth time. 

Apparently, because I already have my bachelor's degree, I no longer qualify for a Pell Grant. News to me. Then they pulled up my student loan information and I found out that younger Tara, who was so determined to become a University of Alabama graduate, used almost all of my federal loan eligibility. I have about six thousand dollars left.

Which would have been fantastic... if tuition also happened to cost six thousand dollars.

Let's just double that and add a few dollars more. 

So that left somewhere between ten and sixteen thousand dollars that we'd have to pay ourselves.

I actually laughed. Not because it was funny. Because sometimes your brain just decides laughter is a better option than ugly crying in front of admissions... believe me, I definitely felt that knot swelling upward into my throat.

Needless to say, I did not pay an admissions fee that day.

I went home instead.... after a few self-loathing tears in the parking lot in front of my soon-to-be 8 year old chowing down in the free Butterfingers he snagged from the Admission Advisors desk. 

And I've kind of been sitting in this weird place ever since.

Here's the thing. It isn't really about esthetics. It wasnt the title... I think that's what's taken me so long to figure out.

This isn't about facials or skincare or waxing or lashes.It's about what all of that represented.

For as long as I can remember, I've carried around this feeling that I was made for more. Maybe that sounds arrogant. Maybe it sounds a little narcissistic. Trust me, I've asked myself that question too. But I don't mean more important than anyone else. I don't mean fame or money or recognition.

I just mean... more than wherever I happen to be standing at the moment.

I've always felt too big for my current circumstances, like I was constantly growing into shoes I hadn't reached yet. The best way I've ever been able to describe it is homesickness.

Except home isn't somewhere I've been. It's somewhere I haven't made it to yet. It's a place in my soul that I haven't moved into yet. 

And that's such a strange feeling to carry around your whole life because every time you think you've finally found the road that's going to take you there, life says, "Aww... that's adorable," and sends you somewhere else.

This felt like one of those roads. It wasn't just another career idea. It felt like I had found something that belonged to me.

As wives and moms, I think we get so used to belonging to everyone else that when something finally feels like it's ours, we cling to it a little tighter. Not because we love our families any less, but because somewhere between raising babies, paying bills, remembering doctor's appointments, washing the same load of laundry seventeen times because someone forgot it in the washer... again... and making sure everyone else is okay, we accidentally lose little pieces of ourselves.

I've sacrificed for my children more times than I could ever count.

And before anyone says it, no... I don't regret that. Not for one second. I will always choose them every single time.

But choosing them has often meant choosing against myself. A very familiar feeling so many moms, even those who already have locked in careers. 

And I've been okay with that because that's what moms do.

Until one day you look in the mirror and realize you've spent so many years becoming everything everyone else needed that you aren't entirely sure what *you* still need.

This dream felt like an answer to that question. So yes, this one hurt. More than I expected it to.

If I'm being brutally honest, for what feels like the twenty-ninth time in my life, I regretted going to college.

Imagine spending years chasing a degree because everyone tells you it's the key to opportunity, only to find out years later that the degree itself is one of the reasons another opportunity is out of reach.

The irony would almost be funny if it wasn't so expensive. It is honestly sickening in so many ways. 

I've spent the last week wondering if maybe I need to stop chasing this version of myself that always seems just out of reach.

Maybe my purpose really is simpler than I've imagined.

Maybe I'm supposed to stay exactly where I am.

Maybe photography is enough.

Maybe raising six incredible humans is enough.

Maybe loving my family well is enough.

And maybe the universe is trying to tell me to quit trying so hard to become something else.

But then...I don't know. My mind screams at me that I am meant for more than the here and now. 

That doesn't sit right with me either.

Because I've never believed I was meant to stay exactly where I am forever. I've always believed growth was part of who I am.

Not because what I have isn't enough. But because I don't think we're created just to arrive somewhere and stop becoming.

So maybe this isn't the universe telling me no. Maybe it's telling me not this way.

Maybe the dream wasn't wrong. Maybe the timing was. Maybe I need to fall back into wearing that hat that fits me for the moment. Or maybe there's another road I haven't even seen yet because I'm too busy staring at the one that just closed.

I don't know.

I really don't. 

What I do know is that disappointment has a way of making us believe the story is over when really we've just reached the end of a chapter.

I've been here before. Photography wasn't my plan either, a second marriage was never my "dream life,"  heck - I didn't even want kinds once I came to terms with a doctor's predicition that I couldn't have any... but that is what happens right.  Isn't the quote something like you can tell God your plan and he'll laugh or something like that?  I am not religious so don't mock me. 

For real though, all of the greatest blessings in my life weren't part of the blueprint I spent years trying to follow. They found me because life forced me to take a detour I never would have chosen for myself.

Maybe this is another one of those detours. Maybe I wasn't made for less. Maybe I was made for later.

And while that doesn't make this disappointment hurt any less today, it does remind me that some of the best things in my life have happened after I was absolutely convinced everything had fallen apart.

So I'll let myself grieve this one.

I'll let life say check mate again while shutter with fear of the day my job as mom reaches retirement. 

I'll be disappointed.

I'll pprobably put my feelings at least once into some crazy Facebook Marketplace purchase because that's a good way to feel accomplished... I assume.

Then tomorrow I'll wake up and keep moving.

Because maybe that feeling I've carried my whole life, that homesickness for a place I haven't reached yet, isn't there to torment me.

Maybe it's there to remind me not to settle for something to make feel whole right now...maybe that path wasn't supposed to happen after all. 

Maybe home is still in there - burried beneath the tasks that require all of me... maybe I still have to pour more of me into the family I've created, into the business I'm building and into myself a little more in a totally different way. 

And maybe... I'm still on my way... I just have like 9 more layovers between now and there.