The Perfect Decision (spoiler alert: it doesn’t exist)

I’m trying to figure out where to live. Facing my divorce, my soon-to-be ex and I both have to move out of our current shared home, and I’m encountering a number of decisions related to that. Rent or buy. Ocean view, skyline view, parking lot view. Note: all those come with different price tags. Close to kids’ schools, close to my work.

I feel paralyzed. I’m burdened to make the right decision for everyone. Everyone but me. The right decision for my kids. The right decision for my mom. And yes, the right decision for my soon to be ex-husband. Why am I even considering him? Because I’ve always considered him. I’ve always wanted to make things easy for him and good for him and I still have that mindset. Old habits die hard.

I don’t know what it’s like to be selfish with my own wants and needs. I only know what it’s like to be concerned with the needs of others. I guess that’s the way a mother thinks. Or maybe it’s the way I was raised. Somewhere along my path of life, I learned that the right thing to do was to put other people’s needs before mine. When choosing a college, I needed to go to the school that gave me the best scholarship because it would be less of a burden on my mom. For residency I chose to return to my hometown because maybe my family would need me. 

I feel like there’s always ONE decision that’s right. And other people make better decisions than me. Other people know what decision to make. I have to ask ten people what I should do, and in the end I still don’t know what to do.

It was easy to be with my soon-to-be ex because he made the decisions for me. Then I didn’t have to worry about making the perfect decision. Both my mom and my soon-to-be-ex have strong personalities, so they were comfortable being the alphas in my life. Both were comfortable telling me what I should do. I went from my mom making the decisions to my ex making them. But now it’s me. I have to make the decisions. I can seek advice, but in the end I have the responsibility of the final call.

I got some advice recently that there is no perfect decision. Being stuck in the nondecision of decision paralysis is a decision too. For example my Airpods haven’t been working for a couple months. At first, I just wasn’t sure if I should buy them again or not. Then I was concerned about the price. Then I wanted to compare different headphones. And then I realized Amazon Prime day coming up, and started thinking that maybe I should hold off and buy them on that day. So it’s been months that I haven’t had headphones, and I have a feeling that Prime day will come and go with me buying nothing. No decision. No action. No headphones. A default decision.

People make decisions all the time. What shoes to wear to on a date. What route to take to work. Pumps or flats. Highway or city streets. Most of the time there is no right decision in these cases. Instead of me thinking there’s a perfect decision, I need to understand that it’s probably going to be ok no matter what I do. I’m not convinced of that. Maybe it’s because I always think my life could be better, that I’m just one decision away from total ruin.

I wish I had a crystal ball to see the outcome of my choices. But that’s not how life works. So going back to the major choice looming over me, the best I can do is to take all the information about the apartments and condos I’ve seen and MAKE. THE. DECISION.

So whatever you’re facing today – pumps or stilettos, soup or salad, Toyota or Honda -- just do the damn thing. Go right or left. Ocean view or parking lot view. Just choose. Because the perfect decision doesn’t exist.