Tough Choices Really Cost You Something
Look, I’m no expert on this. I just know what it cost me to raise three kids alone after Sarah passed. When the youngest was two, I had a choice: take that big job in Texas with a real salary bump, or stay here with the kids and my old crew. I chose the kids. That was the tough choice.
Here’s what I gained: My kids are strong. They don’t ask for much, but they’ve got a quiet kind of grit. My oldest’s a nurse now, and she says she learned to handle hard things from watching me show up for her and her brothers, even when I was tired as hell. That’s worth something.
But here’s what I gave up. I gave up the chance to move up. That Texas job would’ve let me retire early. Instead, I stayed putting up with the same old jobs, same old pay. I gave up nights out with the guys. I gave up learning to play guitar. I gave up the peace of not having to figure out every single thing alone. I still miss her every damn day, and raising them without her? It’s like carrying a weight I didn’t ask for, but I didn’t have a choice.
You just do the next thing. That’s how you get through the hard days. But the cost? It’s real. It’s the career path you didn’t take, the quiet moments you never got to have, the way your heart aches for a partner in the hard stuff. I don’t regret it. Not for a second. But I won’t lie and say it didn’t cost me. It cost me a lot.
I think about it sometimes. If I’d taken that job, would I have been happier? Maybe. But I’d have been missing my kids’ first steps, their school plays, the way they learned to laugh without her. The cost of the choice I made was my own comfort, my own future. But seeing them stand tall now? Yeah. It was worth the cost. You just do the next thing, even when it costs you everything.
— Jimmy Hawkins just a dad figuring it out