Becoming Unstuck

“If not now, then when.” That’s what they say about life, isn’t it? “There is never a perfect time, or it’s never too late.” In my case, the universe is yelling at me that it is time to apply to nurse practitioner school at the tender age of thirty-seven.

Friends keep telling me not to obsess about age, it’s only a number, but that's because it's not them. So here I am, obsessing about age. Why on earth am I feeling the pull to commit myself to three years of treacherous work, strain my family financially, and mother a daughter in the middle of it all? Not to mention, I’ll be about forty years old when I finally finish. “Not a big deal”, you people out there say. But to me, the whole thing is nonsense, and I wish these thoughts of going back to school would just go away. But they don’t.

It seems that I, and probably a good deal of you people out there, seem to think that life will happen in chronological order. Logic says, “go to school, get a job, get married, have a baby, and then another baby, work, retire and play.” And then after all that, you die, having accomplished all that you are to accomplish in the expected manner of which it is to be done. Bada-bing, Bada-boom.

I was very much on that track, or at least for the first half of it. I went to nursing school, got married, worked, and had the baby. And then “the plan” came to a halt because it turns out I wasn’t fertile anymore, which really threw a wrench in the planned path I was on. Not growing my family, wasn’t part of the vision I had for myself or my family. In fact, growing a family, was really the only vision I had for the past several years.

We tried, and we tried and we tried. But no baby. No growing family. And so the worst thing happened. I became stuck. I was stuck in my narrow vision and trapped in my inability to see outward.

And then, one day, a few weeks ago, when I became so sick of being contained in the box that I was living in, I broke free. The clouds parted and Jesus came down. Just kidding. I did not see Jesus, but, the clouds parted and things became very clear. It was time to change. It was time to become unstuck.

So here I am, annoying as the timing may be, listening to the spirit, or the universe, or whatever it is, telling me to take the leap of faith. Nurse Practitioner school has always been something I have wanted to do deep down in my subconscious but never allowed myself to let it truly emerge because of my other visions. But now, as I am becoming unstuck, I see.

Perhaps I don’t get into nurse practitioner school, or perhaps I do. Perhaps I am forty when I finish, or perhaps life has another plan for me. Perhaps it doesn’t make sense, or perhaps it makes perfect sense. No matter how old I am, it is never too late to change, become unstuck, or listen to the little voices in your head saying “just go for it.”