Split Decision

How long is too long to make a life altering decision? Do you sit with it and cautiously run through each imagined future in your mind? Do you make a calculated decision, weighing the pros and cons? Or do you just “go with your gut” as the saying goes and base it completely on instinct? The problem is instinct isn’t helping me. It’s not pushing me one way or another, but freezing me in place.

Four days ago I got the job offer. An opportunity at a new life, hundreds of miles away. I still haven’t responded. The thing is, I can’t leave this place. Or I don’t want to. Or I do but I feel guilty about it. My sister needs me. My sister, optimistic and always full of laughter, even on her worst days. The days when the medication isn’t quite doing what it needs to do and she’s confined to her bed in pain. She won’t admit it, always claims she’s “fine” no matter the situation, but she needs me here.

She had dreams of being an artist. Her paint tubes and palette dried up with old color still sat on the side table in the living room, where she would sit on the worn couch and turn blank canvases into marvelous landscapes. I remember a time when that palette glimmered with fresh paint, my sister carefully dipping her brush in a vivid blue and then back onto the canvas to fill in the perfect, cloudless sky. She was painting our home, the place we grew up in and where we still lived. Our parents had been long gone by then, but the house remained. She turned to look at me, with her lively green eyes, and asked how it looked. “Perfect,” I had said. And I meant it. She did justice to the house that held us together through tragedy.

When she got sick, I watched as her body slowed her down until she could no longer hold a paintbrush without shaking. She tried for a time, but eventually decided to stop.

When you lose the things you love, you lose your purpose in life. So she needed me to keep her going. To sit with her and watch TV, read books to her, or simply be present. I was always going to be there for her, in whatever way she needed. I hadn’t lived anywhere else since the accident anyway, it made sense for me to stay with her. But something in me pushed me to apply to that job. The one across the country that would basically require me to start over. I think deep down I knew I was unhappy. Maybe not even unhappy, just blank. I never thought about myself or what it was that I wanted. I left for a short period of time to go to college but moved back after a year to recover after the loss of our parents. It wasn’t long after that I started having to take my sister to doctor’s appointments and keep her comfortable. So it was that I never in my adult life thought about what I might want to do with it. I went to my job as a checkout girl at the local dollar store, picked up groceries every few days, and went home to cook, clean, and take care of my sister. That was what I did.

This new job wasn’t even particularly exciting, a customer service role at an insurance company requiring basically no experience, but it was a way out, something that could be only mine. I’m not sure I even knew how badly I wanted that when I applied, but apparently I wanted it enough to add some embellishments in my cover letter about how I was already going to be moving to the area soon. I didn’t think I’d hear back, but less than a week later I had a phone interview. Despite my measly customer service experience at the store, I guess I’d soaked up enough bedside manner from being in and out of the hospital so much, because I managed to get the job.

I should be happy, thought I would be happy, but instead I’m just scared. I felt my stomach drop when I got the email. There are just too many unknowns. What was I thinking? I don’t know how to do this new job. I don’t know anything about this place. I don’t know how to move cross country. It was all stupid really. How could I think about leaving this place?

The place we fought over dumb things like who got to choose the TV show we watched when we were kids. Where we had family dinners and took pictures for holiday cards. Where my sister learned how to paint and eventually began to sell her artwork. Where our parents cried when I left for college. Where I came and cried when I heard about the accident. Where I leaned on my sister to keep going and where she eventually learned to lean on me when she got sick.

I see her coming down the stairs, slowly. She doesn’t have the energy that she used to. She walks over to the window looking out from the living room, over the yard. It’s unkempt - neither of us has the time or energy to keep it up anymore - but there’s something serene about the overgrowth taking over the space. It’s unbound, free from the shackles of the suburban “lawn” and able to embrace its true natural form. It’s messy in the best way. My sister looks upon the yard, eyes glistening from the incoming afternoon sun. “We should mow the lawn, maybe plant some flowers, don’t you think?” she asks.

But I don’t answer, because it’s not real. It’s just a memory. One of those inconsequential moments that you don’t think will mean anything until later, when you try to unpack every syllable for some kind of meaning or purpose. It’s been over a year since she’s been gone, and it’s been four days since I’ve been avoiding the chance to move on and make my own life. I don’t care about the house anymore, I certainly don’t care about my job, and there’s nothing here for me anymore. But I can’t just leave. That would mean letting go of the final physical ties I have with my sister, my mother, my father. What would happen to all those memories in this house if I left? Do they all disappear?

But what happens to me if I stay? What little sense of self I have disappears within these walls. I can see it now, slowly, almost imperceptibly, I sink into the faded beige carpet until I’m consumed. I think that actually doesn’t sound so bad and then feel bad for thinking it. I need to give myself a chance. I open my email and accept the offer.