I dreamed of freedom. Free from the responsibility of running InSpero, free from the constant demands on my time, and free to wake up in the morning and decide what I wanted my day to look like. I had spent so many years being responsible for everyone and everything that I was desperate to have a little control over my own life again.
And then I did it. I chose freedom.
It wasn't some big dramatic moment. I didn't have a breakdown or spend weeks agonizing over the decision. I had been thinking about how unhappy I was for a really long time, and one day I simply decided I didn't want to do it anymore. That was it. And I cannot even begin to describe the relief I felt. For the first time in years, I could actually see a life where my time belonged to me.
Little did I know what was coming.
We put our medical office on the market, started showing it, got an offer, and spent weeks going back and forth negotiating. What made it so hard was knowing the buyers planned to gut the space. I don't think I realized how much that would bother me until we were actually going through it.
When we bought the space, I managed the entire buildout of InSpero, which was an enormous undertaking on its own. At the time, we had three locations I was responsible for, and looking back, I think that was the official beginning of the era I like to call, "Let's see how many balls we can possibly keep in the air at once." Creating that office was exhausting, but I poured my heart and soul into every detail and ended up with something I was incredibly proud of.
Now it felt like handing someone a piece of art you'd spent years creating, only to have them point out everything that's wrong with it, tell you exactly what it's worth, not a penny more, and then announce they're going to destroy it. I knew it was just a building to them, but to me it was so much more. As hard as that was to swallow, I had to remind myself that I was the one who wanted to move on. I couldn't ask for freedom and still hold on to everything I was trying to leave behind.
What I hadn't really considered was everything that needed to happen between accepting an offer and actually walking out the door for the last time.
Holy mother of God.
Suddenly there was due diligence, endless requests for records and documents, deadlines coming at me from every direction, and the small matter of emptying an entire 2,400-square-foot medical practice in a ridiculously short amount of time.
And when I say emptying, I mean EVERYTHING. Eleven years of furniture, medical equipment, supplies, artwork, and all the random crap that accumulates when you run a business for that long. And don't even get me started on the dishes, glasses, coffee mugs, and Tupperware in the kitchen. Over the years, we had 17 different people work there, and I'm convinced every single one of them left at least half their kitchen behind. Every last bit of it needed to be sold, donated, stored, or hauled to the landfill. And there was exactly one person left to deal with all of it. Me.
I've spent my days moving heavy furniture, packing boxes, meeting strangers to pick up things they've purchased, running back and forth to storage, and making multiple trips to the dump. My body hurts, my house is filling up with things I haven't figured out what to do with, and I'm pretty sure I've inhaled enough dust to qualify for environmental disability. And through all of it, there's this little annoying voice in my head reminding me that I'm the one who wanted this.
And Facebook Marketplace? What an absolute shitshow.
I have never encountered so many people who want something, ask a hundred questions about it, negotiate the price, arrange a time to pick it up, and then disappear off the face of the earth. Or the people who offer you $50 for something listed at $1,000 and genuinely seem pissed off when you decline. I'm convinced Facebook Marketplace exists solely to test just how much utter stupidity one person can tolerate before completely losing their shit.
The best part is that life hasn't exactly stopped while I'm dealing with all of this. I'm still seeing patients, still helping the doctor I'm parting ways with, still helping patients navigate their transition to new providers, and trying to get my own business off the ground. Healing in the Space Between is growing faster than I ever could have imagined, people are reaching out every day, and I have so many things I want to do with it. I want to write, create, connect with people, and build something that feels like mine. But right now, most days, I'm lucky if I have enough energy left to grunt dismissively after my husband asks me what we should have for dinner, let alone sit down and write something worth reading.
Which probably explains why I've missed my last two blogs.
The irony of all of this is not lost on me. I wanted freedom because I was tired of being pulled in a hundred different directions, and yet here I've managed to create a situation where I'm being pulled in about a million. I wanted to decide what my days looked like, and lately they seem to consist of whatever needs to be handled most urgently, usually involving something heavy, dirty, expensive, or irritating.
And yet, I still don't regret the decision. Not even a little bit.
We spend so much time imagining what life will look like once we finally make a change. We picture the relief, the possibilities, the freedom to do things differently. We rarely picture the gigantic mess that might come with getting there.
I knew closing InSpero and selling our space would be a lot of work. I'm not an idiot. But I had no idea how physically and mentally exhausting it would be to dismantle something that took so long to build, especially while trying to create something new at the same time. I thought making the decision would be the hard part. I couldn't have been more wrong. Making the decision was the easiest thing I've done in a long time. I had no fucking idea what I was in for.
I'm not writing this from the other side, sitting peacefully with my coffee and reflecting on how it was all worth it. I'm writing it while I'm still right in the middle of the chaos, with a list of things to do that seems to get longer every time I cross something off. I'm tired, I’m depleted, I'm frustrated, and there have been more than a few moments when I've wanted to scream and throw things. Who am I kidding, I do both of those things every day.
I still want everything I wanted the day I decided I was done. I haven't changed my mind about any of it. Freedom is still the goal, and it's finally within reach. But here's the thing about getting what you wish for. Nobody tells you about the jagged hell you might have to walk through just to get a little taste of that freedom. And wouldn't you know it, I showed up in flip-flops.