The Worst Decision of My Life

What if I am making the worst decision of my life?!

Leading up to my move to Phoenix in 2021, that was the hot question of the hour. What if this is a no good, very bad, LIFE-RUINING decision?

I fretted. Big time.

But I never thought to ask: what if I am making the best decision of my life?

I am so quick to plan for things going wrong, that I often forget to imagine things going right. Maybe this is just the Enneagram 6 in me — the inner voice that is constantly on alert for threats, my anxiety acting as though I’m a bunny stalked by a bobcat.

But I wonder if we aren’t all a little more inclined to imagine worst-case scenarios over best-case scenarios, especially when it comes to decisions that will alter our every day?

When I read back through my journals from 2020 and 2021, I witness the words of a girl frayed with anxiety, her daily mood a baseline of frenetic worry. Yet despite this anxiety, in the months leading up to my move, I was grieving the leaving.

We are content in our comfort, even comfort in discord, if it means familiarity.

My eyes were too set on what I was losing to be open to the possibility of what I could receive.

Am I really going to give this all up? I worried. Am I really going to say goodbye to this life to move across the country to a city where I know no one?

While I was giving up proximity to best friends and my favorite Mexican restaurant — good, beautiful things! — I was also letting go of unhealthy relational cycles, a gnawing anxiety that was my daily companion, and a pattern of indifference I had adopted as a defense mechanism against the disappointments of pandemic-canceled plans.

But I didn’t know that, then.

Clarity comes in the looking back.

I couldn’t see, then, that in order to live with levity again, I needed to dislodge myself from snug routines.

I didn’t recognize, then, the shriveled state of my spirit’s atrophy, a withering that I had willingly allowed in my apathy.

I could never know, as I pointed my battered Honda west down Interstate 40, what awaited me in the desert.

I could never know that in this dry, parched land, my life would blossom.

I would find God. I would find myself.

Maybe you’re facing a big decision. Or perhaps you’ve already said “yes” to shaking up the circumstances of your life. And maybe, in your “yes,” you’re afraid you’ve made a no good, very bad, life-ruining error.

Maybe you’re wondering: what if this is the worst decision of my life?!

Maybe.

But, I also wonder: what if it’s the best?

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The Worst Decision of My Life

What if I am making the worst decision of my life?

Leading up to my move to Phoenix in 2021, that was the hot question of the hour. What if this is a no good, very bad, LIFE-RUINING decision?

I fretted. Big time.

But I never thought to ask: what if I am making the best decision of my life?

I am so quick to plan for things going wrong, that I often forget to imagine things going right.

Is This Growing Up?

Last week, I flew east to Atlanta to see The 1975 in concert. And then drove to Nashville to see The 1975 in concert, the very next day.

This weekend, I will drive to San Diego and Los Angeles to, yes, see The 1975 in concert.

My equally-invested friend and I did these same shenanigans in 2019, bopping around to a handful of venues to bop to our favorite songs when I was but a darling 26 year-old.

But.

The Greater the Regrowth

Endings: I hate them.

And yet I’ve experienced a smattering of these in the last year.

These endings are what one might describe as hard. They are the tearful kinds, the closures you need, but don't want.

I left the city I called home for a decade. I moved away from the apartment that was my home-sweet-haven for more than five years. I ended projects and businesses that have been dear to my heart for years. I said goodbye to people I never wanted to say goodbye to.

These endings have been cushioned by the newness of this current chapter of my life — a new city! a new business venture! a new community! — but they still leave a void. They aren’t the endings I would have written for myself, no matter how necessary.

A Year Ago Today

I lost it.

I called my best friend crying. This was not a delicate, soft-tears sort of cry, mind you. This was a cry featuring big, sad-girl sobs.

“What if I’m not supposed to live in Phoenix? What if I’ve made the wrong decision?” I wailed.

What if I was ruining my LIFE?!

A Season of Waiting

Did you know that between April and June, rain takes a hiatus from the forecast almost entirely? I haven’t seen — or smelled — rain in the desert since March: exactly two months ago. You’d think the land would be hostile, barren, lifeless.

On the surface, it could appear that way.

On my hikes now, the leaves of the brittlebush are dry, shriveled, and, um, brittle. It spent the spring alive with color, its blooms coating the valley with a carpet of yellow. Now, though, the plant appears to be a goner, its future surely to be spent only as a tumbleweed.

Even Here: Words for When You're Wandering

When I was 22 years old, I visited the desert for the first time.

A metaphorical desert, if we’re getting technical.

I was fresh out of college, starry-eyed and eager to begin my post-grad life. I had big ‘ole me-centered dreams: a shiny, brag-worthy PR job in the music industry! An apartment with an exposed brick wall that (somehow) would fit an upright piano! A committed relationship with a kind, goofy man!

I got exactly none of those things.

To summarize an entire year’s worth of emotion: I was devastated.

What is Home?

But last night was different.

Last night, I looked down and realized — WAIT A MINUTE, that glowing freeway crossing the dark swatch of undeveloped desert land: that’s my freeway. And that — that right there! — that’s my exit. And just over there — that’s my apartment complex. That’s my home!

Home.

I Don't Live Here Anymore

When I was 18 years old, I caved.

After years of disinterest (I mean, how good could it actually be?), I finally picked up the first Harry Potter book. I felt certain I wouldn’t enjoy it.

Within six weeks, I had finished the entire series.

With the wood quietly crackling in the fireplace, my family asleep, and the Christmas tree glowing, I remember turning the final page of the seventh book. I cried (obviously). Not only did I cry for the story itself (I understood the hype!), but I also cried because it was over.

From time to time, I still reread the series, returning to my favorite fantasyland, finding comfort in the familiarity of the characters. But these rereads will never recreate my first experience of magic.

Ally WillisMarch 24, 2023Comment

The Worst Decision of My Life

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