Thirty Days of Truth: Something For Which You Have to Forgive Yourself

[I admit I changed the meme title. It was "Something You Have to Forgive Yourself For." The grammar dork in me couldn't take it.]

One goal that has remained constant in my life is to live with as few regrets as possible. In general, I do my best with the resources and information I have at the time, and therefore I try to be gentle with myself about the decisions I make.

I regret moving myself and my family back to the East Coast from California when I did, and I need to forgive myself for the decision.

At the time we decided to move, I had not slept through a night in over a year thanks to a colicky, stubborn, crazy nursing toddler. I was unexpectedly pregnant again despite the Mini-Pill (PSA: It doesn't work), co-sleeping, and breastfeeding (PSA 2: Breastfeeding does NOT inhibit fertility). I was, in short, Freaking Out.

Husband had a job he loved and I was in a good place too. We had a house in a city we loved, nestled in the hills and fifteen minutes from the Pacific Ocean. Our closest friends were nearby and we seriously loved where we lived.

I panicked. I was afraid we wouldn't make enough money. I wanted my children to have grandparents in their lives. I felt like we couldn't have the family life we wanted if we stayed in Los Angeles. So I pushed us to move.

Honestly, the reasons I had were pretty valid. Now that we live back East, we have my parents down the street, and my children have a great relationship with them. The children have cousins nearby and they are growing up with them in their lives. We can afford a bigger house with a huge, flat yard (Los Angelenos just fainted from jealousy -- flat yards are the Holy Grail in L.A. **). Living back East definitely does have benefits. We have a good life here, and our kids are happy.

It's just that our hearts? Are back in Los Angeles.

I wonder not infrequently how things would have gone if we had stayed in L.A. As much as the East Coast is home to us now, the West Coast is where we are most ourselves, where we feel alive. Husband has not yet forgiven me for moving us here, and if I am honest, I have not either. It's a bit too late for woulda-coulda-shouldas, because buying back in to L.A. is a lot harder than buying out of it, but I will admit that I haven't yet given up hope that we will one day decide to chuck it all and go back, even if it means living in a tiny bungalow and sleeping in one big (BIG) bed.

For me, this was a huge lesson to realize that sometimes even though I have all good and practical and even emotionally valid reasons to do something, I need to listen to my heart. And my heart wears black pants and shops at Gelson's and eats at Baja Fresh and knows alternate routes over Mulholland to avoid traffic on the 405.

But what is best for me and my marriage and my children, now, is to forgive myself and move forward. Limbo does no one any good. As they say, life is what happens when you are making other plans: we live here, we have friends here, we have jobs here, and our children are growing up here. So I have to forgive myself, and I have to put my eyes forward instead of behind me, and I need to start saving up for a little weekend away to get my California fix sometime soon.

** Edited to add: I have been receiving a lot of comments about this sentence. I lived on both the Westside and the Valley when I lived in L.A. My experience was that a flat backyard was coveted and more rare. Obviously, I am just one person and I bought exactly one house in L.A., and perhaps I overstepped my rhetorical bounds with that assessment. Many apologies. Perhaps it was just the area I was buying in: the West Valley, south of Ventura. We bought there not to be snobby and elitist, but for the schools and the commute to the Westside. So, amend my thoughts in your head to say that I was extremely grateful and lucky to live where I did in L.A. and I LOVED it there, but I also feel lucky to live in an affordable house now with an expansive, flat backyard where three little boys can run around and play soccer or football easily. My point was one of counting my blessings, not of putting down L.A. (or the Valley, which was my home). I am sorry if that did not come across.