A friend called to tell me she has left her husband of 15 years. He had been unfaithful, and she couldn’t forgive him. So she packed up her pets and her belongings and left the state. To find another place to live.
I spoke to her the week before she was to leave. She was frightened. As bad as her situation was at home, she feared the unknown, the leaving, the loneliness. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it,” she told me. “I don’t know anyone where I’m going. I’ll be sitting there alone. At least with him, I had a life.”
It was a life of pain, of unfaithfulness, of disrepect. But she had grown comfortable with it and didn’t think she could find anything more. Night after night, she would call, crying, wondering if leaving was the right thing. And yet knowing she couldn’t return to the situation waiting for her. None of us knew if she would find the courage she needed to move on. As much as we supported her and encouraged her, we knew the final decision had to be hers.
I asked a group to write an essay called, “If I could choose to be someone else, who would that be?” A woman in her eighties wrote, “I wish I could risk more … be a person who takes chances. I was always afraid to do that.” But then she added, “I don’t know what I was afraid of now. Whatever happened, I managed to handle anyway.”
This woman was thinking of changing her life circumstances, moving from a large house where she was familiar with everything, to a senior citizen community where it would be easier for her to get along. She felt defeated by age and a body that had its limitations.
It is difficult to move on. Everything familiar seems to be left behind. Safe places. Comfort zones. Whether it’s a move from a house, or a relationship, it’s as if one is stepping out into darkness, where there is no light. Risking is a risky business.
When I bought my house at the New Jersey shore, I left my home of 35 years and the state in which I lived. My new neighbors were strangers, my support group of friends was left behind. It took awhile to feel comfortable in the strange rooms, to look out the window at unfamiliar sights, but gradually, the new sights became old ones and the unfamiliar, comfortable.
After 67 years of moving on, now I am again afraid. I know I have to make some changes in my life, take some chances, move in a direction that holds no certainty. One foot refuses to step in front of the other.
Recently I heard from the woman who left her husband. She has relocated. It is difficult, she says. Sometimes she is very lonely. But she has done things to lessen the emptiness. She joined a local support group. She volunteered at the local zoo. She is looking for a job.
Instead of moving, the 81-year-old woman risked by staying. She had a bathroom put on the first floor. She will sleep in a small spare room in the bottom of her home. She has changed her house, her living conditions, her attitude, so that she can keep the neighborhood she has lived in all her life. In doing so, she, too, is moving on.
My one-year-old grandson Ben stands on his feet and for the first time, tries to walk. His legs are hesitant. He isn’t certain if they can hold his body up or take him where he wants to go. But he wants something across the room and can’t resist trying to get there. So little by little, step by step, he takes his journey, short to our adult eyes, but very long to his infant ones. He doesn’t quite make it the first time, but he gets right up and tries again. And again. He doesn’t seem to entertain the idea of failure.
I will try to follow his example.
Harriet May Savitz is a writer living in New Jersey. The author of 20 books, she has also contributed to “Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul.” Her book “Run, Don’t Walk” was made into an ABC Afterschool Special produced by Henry Winkler.
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