She had asked everyone.
Her mother, who told her what her mother would have done, which was not useful. Her best friend, who told her what her best friend would have done, which was different and equally not useful. Her therapist, who was good at asking questions back, which was useful in a different way.
She had read three books about the kind of decision she was trying to make. She had made pros and cons lists. She had meditated. She had gone for long walks thinking about it. She had not slept well in three weeks.
On a Tuesday afternoon she cancelled her afternoon and sat in the car in the car park of the supermarket and did nothing.
Not thinking. Not deciding. Just sitting.
After about fifteen minutes something settled in her, the way a snow globe settles when you stop shaking it. And in the settling she could see it — clearly, simply, without any of the noise — what she needed to do.
She'd known it before the books. She'd known it before the conversations. She'd known it before the lists and the walks and the sleepless nights.
She'd known it and had been so afraid of the knowing that she'd spent three weeks consulting everyone else, hoping someone would tell her something different or give her permission to not know what she knew.
She sat for another five minutes.
Then she got out of the car and went into the supermarket and bought what she needed for dinner, and called one of the people she needed to call, and said the thing she'd known she needed to say.
You have been carrying the answer. Stop looking for it outside yourself.
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