I only crumble, however, when a choice is before me and the decision to be reached pertains to me and not to others. Considering others is actually easier, not exactly a piece of cake but it changes the angle at which you look at what's on offer. When there's nothing or nobody to take into account apart from your own preference it's extremely hard, particularly if only some of your conditions are met e.g. location, environment etc., and if the unknown or the sameness releases fear and allows unresolved issues to resurface, so that instead of being open you meet it with stubbornness; more wilful stubbornness than is appropriate to the circumstance.
There is nowhere to go from that. Unless you can push through. I've done both with varying successes and disasters over the years. There have been times I've been relieved when a situation that I've wanted out of has been brought to a natural close; natural in the sense that I hadn't had to confront it, though it may have adversely affected others. When I've drawn the line then the extrication itself has been almost as unbearable as the scene I've wanted to escape from, not because in exercising my rights I was doing anything wrong, but because in doing so I felt I was letting people down. Leaving, though staying wouldn't improve my position. If I remained, from duty or guilt, nothing would alter: not my feelings and not the place, and the same stress symptoms would occur.
Whatever I've done has never really worked out to my advantage, and I don't seem to have learned much because I'm still repeating when I should (by now) know better. But then on that, I'm not even clear. I don't trust my own judgement, especially if I'm overwhelmed and the space for clear-thinking is not forthcoming. Yet, when an event has occurred and died it can also be hard to look back on with any deeper or new understanding. Sometimes that doesn't happen at all. It just sinks, barely retained when at the time it felt so critical. Grows so diminished that it results in confusion if you make any attempt to recall it. If you manage to, for the sake of others, you find you can't explain what happened or justify your reasons for doing what you did. None of what you felt then: the mental turmoil, the emotional distress, matters.
Those 'in the moment' emotions aren't long-lasting. By the following week they will have paled and the nervous energy will have exited, though you might reflect for weeks, months over the decision taken, if not the detail of how it came about. Did you make it even, if it was yours to make in full command? Or did the words just pop out of your mouth? It's not a sense of regret that resides with you as you know the end result wouldn't change if exactly the same set of circumstances arose: you would make the same choices, but if one tiny detail had been different you might have chosen differently, perhaps more wisely, and been able to see the picture for what it truly was rather than what you thought it might entail.
In being backwards-looking, you're able to appreciate your fears yet berate your stupidity for letting them once again get the better of you, though you know at some point another attempt will be made; and you're still not completely convinced (now there's distance between you and it) that you were 'in the right', because did you not act instinctively rather than rationally? Should you begin to question your perception of events as they unfold and your reactions to, as well as your misgivings, both then and later?
A depression of spirits descends as if you've failed some sort of test for the umpteenth time, which due to your inability to grasp has now slipped even farther away, whereupon Hamlet interjects: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.
Picture credit: A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach, 1885, Stanhope Alexander Forbes
