Somewhere along the way, all of these questions have built up in my mind, and I'm not sure why I'm so confused. It's like, I let all these people shape and mold my way of thinking, and when I really stop and search myself, I realize maybe I am wrong for letting that happen. Really. Who AM I? Sure, I'm married, I have two kids, I am a stay-at-home Mom by choice. I am smart enough to go back to college, finish my degree, maybe even graduate with honors, but I chose to stay home with my kids while they're small, and I DO NOT regret that decision AT ALL. There are others that may sneer at that decision. If I lived by example of most of the people I went to school with, I'd get like 4 degrees, then think about getting married and maybe have a kid after that. Okay, so we've established that in this particular aspect, I went against the grain and did what I truly believe to be the right thing to do for me. But on other fronts, there are decisions I've made and I've had to really stop and think super hard about why I made those decisions. It's really hard to go into here because there are very few people I know that would even remotely understand. Okay, so I can think of maybe 2 people that would understand my turmoil, and only one of those read this that I know of, and he already knows about my dilemma because we just got through talking about it. The biggest question is, did I make this decision by CHOICE, out of doing the RIGHT THING? Or did I make the decision because I felt pressured, backed into a corner, to follow some sort of rules? Some of the strongest people I know will say that the choice is completely up to me and would not poorly judge me, but to others, if I went back on my decision, would probably lose a lot of respect for me. These same people that would probably lose respect for me are ones that made this same decision I had made, but who's to say THEY made this same decision for the right reasons, or just because they felt equally as pressured as I do? Why this has to be so hard, so confusing, is beyond me. Sometimes I want to just do what I want on this, but it's not so easy when you have all these people looking up to you, believing that you have all this character. But I hate living a lie, too. To me, trying to be someone you're not is way worse than just taking off the mask.