I don’t want to stay in South Dakota.

Our politics and beliefs don’t quite align. Racism is realer than the Midwest nice you always hear about. Female bodily autonomy is a mythical being living deep in the foggy abyss of ultra-conservative mores. The winters are arctic hell, except with more wind here. I don’t love my house or my yard. I definitely don’t love the lack of privacy of living in a cookie cutter house in an early 2000’s development.

Buuuuuuuut.

I have a great doctor, a good VA medical center, plus good local healthcare when needed. And, a great hair stylist—which, if we are being honest, might be the biggest reason to stay. The interest rate on my mortgage is sub 3%—and that’s not even remotely duplicable at this point, and there is the $100k equity.

I can’t leave right now anyway.

My mom needs me. I am her caretaker.  My daughter is starting over in a town nearby.

Life is… here.

So I keep asking myself:

Am I stalling out? Am I putting my life on hold? (Uh—what life would that be, Stacy?)

I’m retired so I don’t have a job. I don’t even have clear goals or motivation right now. I have no social life or many local friends. 

I exist. 

I exist with my Coke (a-cola!) and my dogs and my familial responsibilities in a house that doesn’t feel like it’s mine. I don’t enjoy being surrounded by the things that reflect a version of my life I’m not willing or unable to participate in at this point.

And yet—I have plans for this place. I have hand-drawn sketches of the dream. Screenshots of things that feel like me and so many ideas floating about in this fluid, cavernous imagination. Things that could make it better; or at least accessorize the mediocrity with some funky fresh design and rock my mildly unbalanced aesthetic.

But it still wouldn’t be it-it, you know “the one.” It would still be an average lot in an average city in a socially constipated city in a deluded state of pervasive narrow-mindedness. And I would still have zero ducks with old lady names.

So what’s the answer?

Stay and fix what I have and hope it’s somehow enough? Or leave when I can, on the assumption that something better actually co-exists in a happy place with frolicking, sweater wearing Pygmy goats? Or realize that the balance of needs and wants that leads to the perfect house in the perfect location with the perfect weather is the perfect delusion?

I just don’t know.

What I do know is this:

Not choosing is still a choice with consequences. And living in something that makes you unhappy “for now” has a way of quietly becoming “forever.” Especially since, realistically, I’m going to be dead in 30 years. Eek.

So maybe the real question isn’t

“Do I stay or do I go?” 

Maybe it’s:

“How do I make a life—even here—that doesn’t feel like I’m just waiting for it to start?”