The Easy Way Out

Sometimes, in my most pessimistic of moods, I think about taking the easy way out.

It's exhausting, you see, to constantly feel like you're in an uphill battle against the world in an attempt to beat the odds, and find what we hope to be happiness at the end of the tunnel. So, although I'm not proud of it, when I'm feeling more weary and beaten down than normal, I'll imagine what it would be like to take the path of least resistance.

I imagine attending church with one of my many LDS friends, claiming to have had a change of heart and mind regarding religion. I start regularly showing at one of the many local singles wards in the Provo area, and I find a perfectly nice, respectable, desperately lonely return missionary who proposes to me after barely 2 months of dating.

I would stop working full time, (perhaps completely, since this is a fantasy) and convince him that I should focus on getting my degree before we think about starting a family. He indulges me, although it is an unspoken expectation that I won't use the degree for a career, since my life will revolve solely around my eternal family as soon as we first conceive.

What he doesn't know, however, is that as soon as I have my degree in hand, and a scholarship to my out-of-state graduate school of choice, I divorce him faster than you can say, "as long as you both shall live."

That is my easy way out. Would it be morally reprehensible and so abhorrent that I couldn't stand to look at myself? Probably.

Would I finally have a college degree? You bet your ass I would.

In the end, I know I would never actually do this. Some days, though....

Some days I am more capable than others.