I spent the bulk of last Sunday sitting in my friend’s living room on her overstuffed tan couch listening to NPR and trying to break free of the writer’s block that has seemed to consume me for the better part of the last few months.  I really do have a lot to say, which lately has taken the form of many half started word documents that now sit in a growing larger by the week folder on my computer just waiting for the perfect moment of inspiration to finally be finished.   

On this particular day, my friend and I who both enjoy This American Life—often preferring it to music (due the subsequent impromptu dance parties that tend to occur, hindering overall productivity) chose to listen to episode 425: Slow to React.  The episode featured the stories of individuals who despite being faced with life changing circumstances chose to put off taking action—or perhaps did not even think to react until months or years after the fact—often spending the meantime suffering in silence.  It was interesting to hear their stories—but it also made me think about my life and my own slow reactions. 

Making a change, taking a stand, choosing to break out of a role that has for so long defined your identity is one of the hardest things a person can do.  I’ve heard that fortune favors the bold—but what about everyone else?  Are there benefits to waiting to react?—I think so. 

When I think back to where I was a year ago at this time, or two or even three years ago it brings me to a place of profound sadness.  Last year, devastation—but even before that I was not happy, rather just hanging on, waiting for things to get better, for him to change, for life to get easier…  A common thread of the broadcast was that people knew they were slow in their reaction time but perhaps it was because they were not fully able—or ready to process the events that hindered their reaction. 

When it came to leaving my previous life, once I was bold enough (or perhaps had finally been pushed too far) to publicly list (albeit by drunken facebook post) what had been going on, and how I had been suffering in silence for so long my life changed dramatically—and although it took quite a while, for the better.  So, if I knew then what I know now would I have done it sooner?  I would like to think yes, but the truth is, maybe not.  When I share my story, either here on the blog, or with friends, or even the writing class the line of questioning that follows inevitably circles back to why didn’t you do something sooner—why didn’t you tell someone what was going on—why even after you knew on that fateful night did you, and were you able to act like nothing was wrong? 

At first, I didn’t have an answer.  I couldn’t say why I did what I did or what made me stay so long but as I continued to explore and write and work I slowly began to realize it was because until that final breaking point I simply was not yet ready to process or accept or perhaps, most sadly, even change it.  Slow to react.  It was because I knew that with that one decision, everything in my life would dramatically change, that what I had planned for and counted on for so long would disappear and that by choosing to make that change I knew my life was going to be substantially harder…at least for a while.  In a situation like mine, where I had been trampled for so long deciding when and where and how I was going to confront him was the very last bit of power I had left—and I needed to use it wisely. 

Truthfully, I couldn’t have left earlier because I wasn’t yet ready, or strong enough to face what would come next.  As it turns out there is no convenient time to have your life turned upside down, and had I done it sooner, and in a much less public way I can almost guarantee I would have gone back—which is the saddest and most real truth of all.