The hardest part...

"The hardest part, is realizing you're in charge".

This is an exchange from the exceptional and necessary Mad Men, in which a divorced (and inevitably, ostracized through 1960s mores), single mother is counseling the protagonist's wife, who has thrown Don Draper out of the house. She doesn't know whether her marriage will survive or fail, in the long run. 

"That's the worst", the single mother responds to Betty Draper. Commenting on the uncertainty surrounding a troubled marriage. This line is so simple, and hard won experience has proven to me that it's absolutely perfect. My inner screenwriter deeply admires the deceptively simple feat.

Yes, it's always better on the other side, because at least you know. Uncertainty is replaced by knowledge and certainty. But it's a cold, cold comfort. You search for hope, and think there may be glimmers of it, but it's probably just a mirage. Or maybe this is all just an extension of my inability to cope with that uncertainty. 

"The hardest part, is realizing you're in charge", says the single mother to Betty Draper.

Yes, you realize you are in charge. You have to answer to nobody. You have the counsel of no one. It's deeply, truly scary to be making all those decisions, all those calls, on your own. Humbling. Making them within a partnership provided a comfort, even if there was friction, because you knew you were trying to figure it out together. Sure, you may have disagreed, you may have different perspectives, but there was a common goal. At least in theory. Now, no one has my agenda, except for me. And now I'm responsible for that agenda, as well as a little child, so open-hearted and helpless without me. He needs me to know the answers, and I don't always have them. Frankly, I feel like I'm missing them a lot of the time. 

Sometimes being in charge isn't such a great thing. In fact, it just might be the hardest thing of all.