Finally Choosing Me

When I finally made the decision that California was going to be home, I rented a two-bedroom apartment.

I was starting over.

It wasn’t the first time I’d stood inside an empty home and had to figure out how to fill it. Six years earlier, I’d done the same thing with a rental house.

But this time was different.

Nobody else was coming.

There wasn’t a bedroom I was preparing for someone.

There wasn’t a space I needed to keep in mind because eventually somebody else would live there.

There wasn’t another person’s future being factored into every decision I made.

For the first time, I was looking at an empty home knowing that I was the only person it needed to fit.

And that felt very different.

I needed furniture.

Towels.

Plates, glasses, silverware, wall decorations—all those things you don’t think about until you’re standing in an empty apartment wondering what exactly you’re supposed to eat dinner with.

Oh, and naturally, the apartment was on the second floor.

Because apparently starting your life over isn’t quite challenging enough unless stairs are involved.

But I got to choose everything.

Not because someone else wouldn’t care what I picked.

Not because I was the person responsible for decorating.

But because there genuinely wasn’t anyone else’s opinion to consider.

I could choose something simply because I liked it.

That sounds like such a small thing.

It wasn’t.

I had spent most of my adult life making decisions with somebody else in mind.

What would the kids need?

What would my husband want?

Would this work for everybody?

Who else might need this space?

This time there was only one question:

What do I want?

And I wasn’t entirely used to being asked.

And Then Something Really Strange Happened

It was quiet.

Not lonely.

Not sad.

Quiet.

I could sit in my apartment and there wasn’t a crisis happening in another room.

Nobody needed me to fix anything.

There wasn’t an argument brewing.

There wasn’t a problem waiting around the corner for me.

There was just…

peace.

And considering the way I’d spent much of my life, peace was a little suspicious.

I kept waiting for something to happen.

Surely somebody needed something.

Surely there was a problem I’d forgotten about.

Surely I wasn’t actually allowed to just sit there and enjoy my own home.

But nothing happened.

And slowly, I started learning something that seems incredibly obvious now:

Life isn’t supposed to feel like an emergency all the time.

My Daughters Still Found Me

Of course, moving to California didn’t mean I stopped being Mom.

My daughters had me on Life360, so apparently moving across the country wasn’t enough to escape surveillance.

They figured out pretty quickly when I was in the car.

And that’s when they’d call.

I loved those calls.

I’d hear about their day.

Work.

Plans.

Whatever was happening in their lives.

Sometimes absolutely nothing important—which are often the conversations you end up missing the most.

There was distance between us, but there was still connection.

And I started discovering something I hadn’t really understood before:

I could have a life of my own and still be their mother.

Those two things didn’t cancel each other out.

I Got Pretty Comfortable With Peace

For about six or seven months, it was just me in my little apartment.

And I liked it.

A lot.

Maybe a suspicious amount.

I came home and things were exactly where I’d left them.

I chose what was on television.

I ate what I wanted.

I went where I wanted.

Nobody asked what was for dinner.

Nobody used my stuff.

Nobody needed anything.

I was beginning to understand why people get so protective of their peace.

Then my mother’s ability to continue working became impossible.

And she needed somewhere to go.

So Nana moved from Texas to California.

Into my peaceful little two-bedroom apartment.

And she did not arrive alone.

She brought her sassy tuxedo cat, Lucy.

And my dog, Sadie.

So much for living alone.

Apparently Peace Can Have Roommates

Here’s the thing I’ve learned since then:

Peace doesn’t necessarily mean an empty house.

It doesn’t mean nobody ever needs you.

And it definitely doesn’t mean your mother, a tuxedo cat with opinions, and a dog can’t move into your carefully created sanctuary.

Peace is different from isolation.

What changed wasn’t that I suddenly stopped loving or helping my family.

What changed was that I had finally experienced what peace felt like.

Once you’ve experienced that, it’s much harder to convince yourself that chaos is normal.

My life would change again.

Nana would eventually return to Texas.

She’d later come back to California.

I’d move from that little apartment into a four-bedroom house.

There would be more family.

More cats.

My nephew.

And at times, enough humans and animals under one roof that my peaceful little apartment would probably feel like something I’d imagined.

But I hadn’t imagined it.

For six or seven months, I got to sit inside a life I had built completely around myself.

And that little second-floor apartment taught me something I desperately needed to learn.

Peace wasn’t something I had to earn after everyone else was okay.

I was allowed to have it too.

It wasn’t the first home I’d ever made for myself.

It was the first one I made without leaving room in the plan for someone else.

And for a little while, before life changed again, I got to find out what happened when the only person I had to build a life around was me.