Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
By Gaby Dunn
Do you like where you are right now?
Physically, I mean. Do you enjoy it? Are you in a comfy house out near a lake? Are you in an apartment in an overcrowded city? Are you in a group home or a rehab center? Are you in a treehouse? Where ever you are, is that where you want to be?
What would happen if you went? If you moved? If you picked up and took off? Would you start to miss the place you’d been? Would you finally appreciate what you’d had? Or would you be free? Would you feel unshackled and lifted?
There’s no way to know. There seems to always be myriad paths we could take and I am very bad at decision making. Whenever I do finally pick a side, I’m consumed by what might have happened had I made the other choice. I imagine a complete parallel universe where the other “me” is living the life that would have happened had I chosen to go another way. Or to stay. The old Clash hit rings a bell: Should I stay or should I go?
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqH21LEmfbQ&w=600&h=350]
So which is it? How much difference would it really make in your finale if you chose to stay? Who else would you meet? What else would you experience if you chose to go? Is there no “right” thing to do? Just a series of decisions, strung together to make a life?
Do you like where you are right now? Emotionally and mentally, I mean. Do you like what you do every day? Do you like your job? Your friends? The way you think? It’d be easier to stay the same, to be calm, to be buried in habit. It’d be easier to stay healthy and sane and to never try to rock that boat. At least for me, I’m done rocking. I want to do whatever I can just to feel okay. I am staying. But should I be going?
What if you broke up with your partner? Right now. Today. What if you let go of all the complications and the fights and the doubts and just up and ended it? What if you said, “I really don’t give a flying f–k about trying to compromise with you anymore?” And you meant it. And started off down the street and you never stopped walking until you were finally alone.
What if you stayed? What they were the only one for you? Your partner in crime. Your one true love. What if you stopped being cowardly and you actually, for once in your life, stayed? Is that the braver thing? To decide that no matter what, you are not going to bail because you always, always bail. You’re almost sure this person is worth it. That they won’t hurt you.
There’s no way to know anything. I’m trying to see that as a beautiful thing and not as something so immensely terrifying it is actually hard for me to get out of bed in the morning.
Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe none of us have that much control. If we stay, it was the right thing to do and if we go, that, too, was the right thing to do. Or either way, we’ll probably never know.