A Big Change

There has been change brewing. I briefly hinted in The Times I Didn't Listen that Tom and I were going back and forth on a decision. It was something that he wanted me to do and something I wasn't sure about. Initially he wanted me to give up the home daycare and take a job outside the home. However, we are in Timbuktu, USA and jobs that would make it worth it to give up my business are just not plentiful. And for what I can make with my social service background, I don't earn enough to justify a commute. But this is something he wanted and I decided to submit. It's part of why I was so busy those months that I dropped out of Blogland for awhile. I searched and submitted applications and nothing seemed right. Well, one thing led to another and we decided that I should apply to go to graduate school this coming fall. So I decided to apply to an MS program in Clinical and Community Mental Health. Then I realized that my GRE scores were too old to be valid. So I had to study for and retake the GRE in a hurry. This was no small feat considering I haven't been in a math class since 1999 unless you count statistics in the year 2000. Anyways, I'm rambling. I jumped through all of the hoops - retook the GRE, gathered letters of recommendation, which was interesting considering I haven't had a supervisor in over six years and haven't had a college professor for much longer, wrote my personal statement, and filled out the application.

That was in January and it's been a long wait since then. Well, today I got a letter. I've been accepted! I'm in. I'm excited and nervous and a bit sad at the same time. It's a tad bittersweet for me because it means tacking on years to a plan that we had to get out of Timbuktu, USA. I can't begin to describe how much we both despise our location, but we see it as a means to an end right now. It also means seeing less of my children, although when I do spend time with them once I'm in school I will no longer have other people's children's needs to care for constantly. It will be just me and mine and after running my business for nearly six years, I really really like the idea of that.

My husband is pushing me - in a good way. And this is where life can be so interesting sometimes. There was a time that I was the one who pushed. Now I'm trying to tread carefully here as to what I reveal because it's not my story to tell. So without going into detail, I will just say that my husband does not come from a very great familial background. So there was a point when we first met where he needed me to push him. It wasn't laziness on his part. It was lack of confidence and belief in himself. See our marital pattern whereby I pushed and he acquiesced has some roots that at a point in time was functional and perhaps necessary even if we are now working to undo that pattern. But now he is on the verge of finishing up one portion of his schooling. He is ready for a break before he completes his next level and he wants me to fill in that gap by finishing something that I started years ago. This won't be my first time in graduate school. A year or so into our marriage I walked away from a doctorate in Clinical Psychology program after the first year. And he is pushing me to finish. This is something that he wants for me. He knows that I only have social services to fall back on if God forbid something should ever happen to him and he wants more for me and a bit more security for our children.

We are changing and he is changing. Already I see how he is working to help me become the best version of myself that I can be. I think that's what can be so attractive about DD. If we didn't have this in our lives, I feel that I would still be stubbornly clinging to what I know and we wouldn't have started looking into jobs or schooling for me because I would've immediately dismissed it. I sometimes let fear of the unknown get in the way of my decisions. I *think* Tom knows that about me. And perhaps he's going to continue to chip away at this tendency of mine through various situations and decisions as we continue through life.

I admit that I'm excited, but scared. I'm scared because I don't know everything about my next year. I don't know my schedule. I don't know how busy I'm going to be, how much I will be gone, how much study time I will require, how many days I'll get with the kiddos, what it will look like to share homeschooling responsibilities with my husband, how much I'll enjoy my classes, what my graduate assistantship responsibilities will be, and the list could go on and on and on. I guess my Tom, my Dom, is not going to let me live life from my little hidey hole of what is safe, secure, and known. He's going to push me and that my friends is a good, good, good thing!

On another note, I do plan to answer your questions. I will likely start on some answers with my next post. It is still March, so feel free to continue to ask away if there's anything you are curious about. I'm an open book. You can ask me just about anything!