Everything has a price

A day before I left for this business trip, I was driving with Mon Amour's father. He made one of his usual comments that I label "pessimistic". He said, referring to the fact that I will be leaving, that he's happy to see my career doing so well but that everything has a price. The comment stuck because I carried it with me. That's what I hate about his comments, there is a good sense of reality in them that I'm not permitting myself to see. Me wanted to say, no, it's not that serious, it's just a trip. But it's a loaded question, everything always has a price and we, or at least I, don't like dealing with the price and asking the obvious question before hand: is it worth the price? I'll avoid the question in general, maybe out of fear that I would do nothing in my life if I was paying any attention to this concept.

The unusual thing about this trip was that I created it. In the past, I've been assigned these trips. This time it was me running with an idea. Meeting the engineering groups in Austin was going to push things along fast and secure a long term relationship for our small group in Israel. I remember the point so clearly where I was aware that I could just let the idea sit and never really go anywhere or make the leap. I took the later because as much as the fear wanted me to stay, I was excited to be driving something on a much bigger scale.

There were two parts to the fear involved in the decision. First there was the fear of standing out on a limb professional, taking a risk when I wasn't 100% sure of what I was doing. And secondly there was the fear of the impact on the family - my five year old daughter's sensitivity to separation, the guilt of leaving Mon Amour alone with our two young children and the fear for the couple at such a sensitive time.

The anixety started before the trip and reached panic on the flight away. Anxiety is always the sign-post for the unspoken, for the intuition that you are ignoring.

I arrived home to my five year old daughter so happy to see me yet full of pain in her eyes and a kind of compulsive need to go to the toilet every half hour with a kind of diarhea. I arrived home to find my partner even more in a bubble than when I left. I arrived home to my guilt for having messed up the lines of communication home. She was happy to see me, but in the end, he quick withdrawl make me wonder how welcome home I am. I was so exhausted that I couldn't even keep myself awake to give her some attention after the children went to sleep.

I paid a really high price on this trip. I might win a rosier professional future out of it, but the way I feel right now, at home, unwanted - the price was too high for the family and for me.

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