The Strange Monster

Depression is a strange monster. 

There are things you can do to weaken it, but they're hard to do because of it. There are pills you can take to make you stronger than it, but just enough to survive. There are days you feel like it's finally gone, only for it to show up the next day, rearing its ugly head. And there are whole days lost to laying underneath its full weight. 

I don't have bad days all that often; depression hasn't been with me my whole life. In the pandemic my depression has felt more like an ever-present companion – at times it's more in my face than others. Perhaps there's some rhythm to the worst of it that I just haven't hacked yet. Today was one of those days. And sometimes it's kind to me and lines up with days I have nothing to do, maybe more the nothing to do invites it in, but today was not that day. 

Today was a draw a bath (well, that's every day in my house), bring the coffee up, and pour some salts in kind of depression day. Write some things, cry a bit, write some things, cry a bit... Sometimes I almost believe the monster needs to be tended to. It needs attention to stay away for a little while after. Which is what struck me today. I actually knew what to do when I realized it was not going to be a good day but that I didn't want to surrender to the monster's heaviness. 

I decided to drop the dog at daycare. I finished my long bath after really shaving my legs, and we got in the car. I had one of my favorite albums playing while I drove, and I didn't try but just thought, even though there are days like this when everything big feels hopeless, there's always this music. And I felt just a little better. When I got home, I thought since it was a balmy 10 degrees today, I should finally change the engine air filter in my car. I've never done it before, turns out it's insanely easy. Great! I got one little something done. Next, I made myself a delicious, quality meal and enjoyed it without anyone whining at me. Just before my first session, I put on some makeup to brighten up my not-so-cheerful face. And wouldn't you know: my last session of the night was a home run. 

When the dust settled, it's still one of those days; no simple magic had slain the dragon. But I found a little relief that if you care for the monster and meet its needs, it isn't quite as treacherous to have in your company. 

Worth & Hurt

I do want it again. The head over heels love. Gratefulness just to be near them in the day-to-day. The inability to imagine life without them. But I find myself wondering, do you get that more than once?

I know I can open my heart again, but won't anything else feel a little less sparkly? Or will my heart be resistant to feeling head over heels, grateful, and like something could possibly be forever? Logically, I think it's the latter, as I know my wary heart is fearful in resisting hope that there can be something sparkly again. I sit with a mixture of longing and fear; daunted and yet unable to let fear keep me from being seen. 

After my last relationship, I kept hearing this thing to me that drove me nuts: "it's not a reflection of your worth." I know rejection isn't a reflection of my worth, though it is my painful and perplexing reality nonetheless. When what you really want is to be seen for who you are and found captivating, inspiring to gratitude, and an undeniable fixture in one's life; for someone to recognize your worth and grab hold of the chance to share in life with you? Yeah, rejection of that very idea is painful. It feeds hopelessness. It bolsters fear. 

Yet the only reason I can dare to try to open my heart is because I know my worth. I value sharing life with others and find that the most fulfilling relationships are the most intimate ones, in which full selves commune. I know that what I have to bring to a relationship, especially a partnership is something worth having and being grateful for, committing to. But all of that doesn't mean I'm not scared to offer it because the last time I did it was rejected, and that hurt. I am not concerned that I'm unworthy, I am afraid of ever knowing that pain again.

May Take to Another

Not too long ago, I "got back out there".  Initially I told myself, I was going to date the old-fashioned way, picturing casually getting malts in an ankle length skirt without all this pressure of will we be together forever, or is he just trying to sleep with me? But really, I set out that way because I was downright terrified of the prospect of letting someone in my heart again. And I fully doubted anyone else could get there.

It's still a bit surreal sometimes that it hasn't just been a long week since I've seen him, or even that I didn't dream the whole thing up, start to finish. So when it came to accepting that he had run away for good, I thought maybe my way forward was just to try. Ground myself in reality by moving forward in some way. So...

Swipe left, swipe right. Swipe on your ex to find out he swiped right (interested) on you...? Never mind that confusing nonsense. Then another right swipe, SUPER right swipe on a joyful, handsome hottie that to be honest I thought to myself was out of my league. There's no way he'll be into me, so what does it hurt? *swipe* But in real life leagues do not exist, which I keep forgetting. Simultaneously, I still told myself – and this guy – I was not ready to put my heart out there, but wanted to connect with someone again. 

Independent of starting to chat with a new man, I realized something else that I've realized before but had since forgotten. See, I thought about my closest friends. My best friend I've known since we were in first grade, I love her dearly. Another friend I've known for several years, she too has claim of significant space in my heart. Yet another I've only grown close to in the past couple years, but I can be fully honest with her and admire her greatly. All are very different people that I deeply love and no one love supersedes or negates another. So then, no matter how significant my love for my last partner was, it doesn't mean that there isn't more available for someone new. 

Now, don't get ahead of me, I am not saying I've found love. Rather that I was pleasantly surprised to find myself genuinely intrigued by someone new. And a little less afraid – and maybe even a little excited – of the possibility that my heart may take to another. 

Alone at the Bottom

I have felt completely tossed and tumbled, like being swallowed in a sea of confusion. Wearily trying to find my way to the surface, to catch my breath and it pulls me back. 

This is the biggest rejection of my life. There is no simple way to process it. Not everyone has experienced this kind of personal rejection. Likely few have been completely blind-sided by someone they let their walls down with. So I keep trying to explain it and saying that I can't find the right words to describe how much it has afflicted me psychologically. (A therapist nails it in the caption here.) When the reality you've lived in for over a year is brought into question, you start to think that maybe the love you thought you were given was also an illusion. I don't know, because I don't know what was going on, other than I wasn't getting the whole truth and was being kept happy for some reason. The ironic thing is how much it hurts in the end. Keeping up a charade only made this so much harder to process. When what you thought to be true for a long time is revealed to be partly a show, it is incredibly exhausting and complicated to not only grieve but try to make sense out of what it is you're even grieving. Am I losing someone I loved, or did I really know that person? Am I losing the kind of love I'd been hoping for, or was that all just a show too? Can I trust my perception of reality? How about of whether someone is genuine? Why work so hard to make me feel loved, then cut and run the moment it was most convenient?

These are among the questions I struggle with. But am told "one day it will get better" - how? Just accept that a partner could leave at any moment? I'd rather be alone than let someone do this to me again. "You say that now..." yes, I do. How should I keep believing that I want a companion to share life with when I was just shaken to my core by thinking that I'd found that with someone who hurt me instead? "You don't deserve this" and "Someone would be lucky to have you" not to sound conceited but, I know. I actually don't question my worth, I question why giving my best wasn't enough? Or not desirable? Why being me was sustaining but not commitment-worthy? It's not what I believe about myself, but what I was shown. 

And it's almost like my system is telling me I'm being abandoned, which makes it so terrifying to be alone – alone in my house all the time, alone all day; sometimes days in a row, alone in my finances, alone in my cooking, alone when I go to sleep and alone when I wake up – yet I cannot fathom how I could ever know that I'm safe in an intimate relationship again. Or how I'd muster up the courage to risk it.

You'd think it's been a month and a half, I'd start to be okay. But I'm still struggling. Every day. My extravagant self-care consists of eating and bathing regularly, plus a 20-minute walk daily. I don't know when I'll feel good enough to work. I can't afford not to, but I happen to have an emotionally involved job. Even the paperwork is a growing disaster. The dishes pile up. The house is a mess, but no one sees it. I find myself wondering how many days go by that no one even thinks of me now. Who am I really important to? The person to whom I thought for certain I was, is contentedly moving on. Which tells me I was pretty disposable to someone I thought loved me. (Or was thought of as strong enough to handle it.) And that feels incredibly lonely. 

A close second is being with others and trying to share how this all feels, only to be told it gets better, or there's a lesson, or it hurts so much because that's how much I loved... It's hard to pull off but it's more kind not to make someone feel alone when they are with you.

Which has also made me realize something I don't think many people think about. Societally we're not only very focused on romantic love, but we're also incredibly busy. Chase after all the experiences. Work work work. Grind grind grind. To go from being in an intimate relationship for years to solo out of nowhere, is to experience a kind of whiplash. And what feels like no relief in sight, because we live in a way that the romantic relationship is primary and everything else is supplementary or optional. Until you're single, and then all you get is supplements. And yourself. Which, I can only speak for myself, but I am not an endless well to meet my own needs. Some of them, yes, but also for some I need others. That's to be human. Contrary to the popular individualism of the day.

So that's all I'm navigating mentally and emotionally right now. Facing down my 30th birthday which, frankly, I don't really care about. I was looking forward to it but the past year has been so up and down, that it sort of seems like it'll be just another Monday. 

The one thing, the one cliche I can tell myself that doesn't totally feel false or invalidating is that it must be only up from here. This is my rock bottom. My lowest place. And I'm on the ground. At least I love myself enough to try to keep going, to keep crawling, because maybe, possibly someday there's some hope in the future. 

Grief and Knowing Yourself

"To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom" -Socrates

In the past many weeks I have seen so much of myself. Though they've been weeks of living hell, hanging on to functioning – if you could even call it that. I've always gleaned from and studied what I'm experiencing, always hoping to gain understanding.

If I had a dime for every time I'd been told not to overthink, I'd have...some amount of money. Some dimes. But I know the line between processing and slipping into obsession. To process, my mind will turn something over and over until I understand it. Whether it's learning how something works because it interests me, or understanding human interactions to try and be better or at peace. These last several weeks have been set on the latter. Making sense out of this.

In this time, I've been getting these gut feelings, followed closely by a wave of fear that would topple me and attempt to destroy my footing. There were a few days that I'm not sure I'd ever been so challenged mentally and emotionally in my entire life. I thought back to past breakups, and while they were trying times with much processing, they did not compare to this. Though I hadn't quite put my finger on why.

But these little moments of clarity have come. I know myself, I'd think, I know what went on and who he is. I know.

I'd reached out for support because I was suffering so greatly. I needed to make sure others were aware of me. I felt an immediate and sudden shift to my aloneness. But with sharing of trouble, comes advice. I tend make my mind up and then test my certainty against advice or input. When down for the count, this became slightly less important than trying to eat something that day.

Still, I felt that knowing inside of me. I felt a newfound sense of attunement with myself. See, I'd been struggling with feeling distant from many people, and within that feeling like I'd been changing and growing so much over the past several years, that some in my life didn't know who I am now. I looked back at past painful struggles with grief and moving forward after the loss of a relationship, and I correlated it with when depression set in. At the time, I was beginning to question my faith and find less comfort in it, more unease. This put a discomfort in some of my relationships, as well. Not only was there misunderstanding or a felt lack of space for grief over the relational loss, but it is incredibly difficult to question the Christian faith.

The past few years then, I lived with the weight of this. Going on hiding a part of myself, and feeling to some extent like I was both alone and could not fully trust others. What I'd actually done was grown weary of expressing who I was and what I believed, whether about grief or about questioning a long-held belief system.

As I felt myself thrashed among the waves of grief in this recent loss, I knew I had to reach out for help and tell others how to show up for me, and that I had to be authentically messy as long as it took. This approach has been incredibly healing for me in regard to those old wounds. I think it's something I could only allow myself to do because of the work I've done (with the help of therapy) and what I've learned in spite of depression over the past years, particularly this past year.

It is difficult, especially in times of grief, to be aware of oneself and find the energy to fight for that self. It is risky and feels even more vulnerable to ask others to be there for you. And it is all necessary to allow the grief to be with you.

"To thine own self be true." -Shakespeare

Girly Girl

"It's okay to be a girly girl, it's okay!"

The words felt like they hung in the air, swirling me befuddled into a confusion – I just said "That's not me," because it's not. I haven't been much of a girly girl since I was little. I'm okay with it. I remember when I stopped wearing daily makeup and what a relief it was. I love that I don't have to wear curve-hugging clothes that give me an impression of being feminine because they more readily display my figure – which is all any woman's good for, after all.

I'm surprised I didn't take on the title feminist sooner. Though not that surprising, it took stepping back from my Christian bubble to fully understand how much it aligns with me.

I've always looked at the women in my life and felt so grateful for being surrounded by powerful, tenacious humans like them. And yet, so many women still don't know their power and tenacity outside of their relation to men. Many still don't know their value aside from the gender roles we've given that require them to "put on their face" every day, act polite even when being disrespected – be a girly girl.

Women are not allowed to be what we want, we're instead told it's okay to fall back into the stereotype of our gender. What if I want to wear baggy, comfortable clothes instead of heels? What if dressing up and putting on makeup is a special occasion thing, not an everyday thing? Also, can I just damn grocery shop without being catcalled?

Christmastime: Anxiety, Pain, Grief, & Hope

"Remember that if it’s heavy and ill-fitting, if it’s a burden, you don’t need to hold it." Sarah Bessey

This has been yet another hard year and as Christmas (my favorite holiday) comes around, I've had a lot of anxiety. To be honest, this entire year I've had a lot of anxiety. It took me a while to realize that was what was gnawing at me, but since I have it's been a strange relief. In realizing and recognizing the places of pain in my life, I have found so much more freedom and peace in sitting with those things, in tension with desiring hope for the future. I don't have a ton of hope right now, and it seems every time I've gotten it something else tries to squash it. Instead, I've noticed the simple pleasures that can tend to get overshadowed by the hard things.

The above quote (and blog) from Sarah Bessey spoke to me. Not all of it resonated in a deeply felt way, but more in a weary nod of agreement from the heart. I've learned a lot about grief in ways I wasn't expecting to; in ways I didn't know I still needed to. Of course in the throes of pain and immediately after, you think you've known enough of it. In that, I've learned a thing or two about resilience, too.

Resilience isn't necessarily the springing back up from a blow with enthusiasm that we may think of it as. It's more of a rolling on your side, catching your breath, processing what happened as best as your brain will let you, and slowly steadying yourself into an upright position – in stages. Grief and pain can be slow. I was so tired from grief and pain in the previous year, I didn't want to do it again this time. I was so deeply angry for being forced back down into the hurt, and I didn't want to deal with it, so I laid there for a while – as Brene Brown puts it in her book, Rising Strong, I was "facedown in the arena." It wasn't until maybe August I realized and fully admitted to myself that I was in grief again. And November revealed to me that I had grief yet to come from my first relationship.

What's surprising is that I thought this year was the lowest I've ever felt, until I got wind of some startling news: my first love is marrying someone else. That's the lowest I've felt in nearly a decade; my heart broke all over again. It scared me, the depth of isolation I felt. Still even writing this, thinking about that makes my eyes well up with tears.

And we first connected at Christmas time, three years ago, spent one together as a couple. Then by the following holiday season I was falling in love again, which I thought was maybe the redemptive plan to follow the long, drawn-out heartache. I thought I'd found what must be better for me. But as fast as it started and high as it rose, it more quickly and ruthlessly broke my newly healed heart.

I learned so much in this past year about pain that I know will help the next time I get knocked off my feet. I'm certainly no longer naive enough to think I'll be ready, if anything I know you never are, but I know that even in the very lowest I can hang on. That's resilience. It's by no means a strength of my own, but the things curiosity and others have taught me. Those who showed up in the pain and let me sob on them, or repeat my pain in words so worn out. Those people saved me. Curiosity about how our consciousness is a blend of mind and heart that can be experienced but also managed; learning that the darkest of dark feelings are real, but not true. Not everyone is so lucky – and yes, it seems like luck. Perhaps some want to call it grace, which if it suits you, by all means. To me, it seems like luck that when I felt like life is possibly too painful to endure, I found it in myself to grapple for hope in spite of myself – not because I have some virtuous ability others aren't as fortunate to have, surely not because my faith is strong.

It was actually knowledge that helped me. I write this with a dual purpose: first, to give voice and validation to others experiencing a hard time or a hard year. The second is to tell them it's possible to get through the low moment, even when it doesn't feel like it. One of the best things I've heard in a long time is your feelings are real but they aren't true. When life feels like it's too much to handle, it is right now but it won't always be. Sometimes that's as close as we can come to having hope, and that's okay, because it's enough to actually get us to tomorrow.

A practical thing I learned this year was to notice what I'm feeling (not to be confused with reacting or acting out of emotion), and not surprisingly I noticed my anxiety piquing as Christmas started to come around this year. Which I suppose is the final, bonus message: painful spots might still hurt even after you think they're done hurting, but it's okay. Getting comfortable with the idea that there is pain in life is important, but with a sense of compassion for yourself (not suck-it-up-ism!).

So as I approach Christmas, I hold the tension of weary hope for better love and renewed joy in the future, with feeling anxious about embracing the pain that will inevitably hook me in the next few weeks. Within that, I will also take Sarah's words of wisdom to heart, and I hope you will, too.

The Real Thing

I've been feeling like there's a strong juxtaposition from intentional dating and online dating, but I haven't been able to put my finger on it but it sort of just dawned on me in twofold:

I recently went out on a few dates with a guy, we'll call him Andre. Throughout the dates, there were things I didn't like but was trying to be open-minded and go-with-the-flow. After all, the most recurrent unsolicited dating advice I get is to not be so picky (which to me sounds a lot like lowering your standards or expectations, or turning off that little voice in your head that's skeptical). It's not like it wasn't enjoyable to spend time with him, but it wasn't enthralling like the beginning of either of my two relationships. I had moments of not fully liking my time with Andre; he was alright, but underwhelmed me. For having these qualities that interested me, much of the rest of him didn't, and some things even turned me off of him. That probably sounds harsh, but it just wasn't there and I wish I hadn't ignored it when I sensed it.

And therein lies the problem: it seems in online dating I have to let my guard down more because my gut tells me that certain things are yellow flags, which is not very open-minded. When really, I think I've let other people's advice get in my head too much. If it were up to just me, I'd trust my gut, which was usually telling me the right things in hindsight. And truthfully, it is up to just me. It's not anyone else's call, because it's not theirs to live with. For instance, with Coffee Shop Guy, had I better listened to my intuition, I could've avoided some things that were detrimental to our relationship. If I had been better attuned to myself...

Then it's that there's something about just noticing someone in life that works better for me. Online seems to be more about curating, or forcing something to be interesting because you should, if you want it to be successful. And it seems because there are all these options out there, one should be able to find tons of suitable people to date. The reality is that it's rare to find someone you feel intrigued by, turned on by, and excited to be with, and for it to be mutual. It's not like opening an app suddenly presents a huge selection of potentially dreamy, magnetic lovers ripe for the taking. But that's the illusion, which adds a pressure to the process and the act of swiping.

Frequenting an establishment and noticing someone, the way their face looks when they think or how their eyes sparkle when they talk, or how they put on their jacket, – all the while wondering who is this human that's become irresistibly fascinating – found simply by existing in the same space. Or noticing someone who's been under your nose, who you've known for a decade without a clue you could be best friends and that they're quietly so very cool.

It's hard to expect someone's fish and football pictures combined with an extensive three sentence self-description to stir the same wild curiosity that can organically bubble up in you when crossing paths with another human in real life.

It's hard to beat the real thing.

Keeping Time

I'm the sentimental type. I think about anniversaries, they're etched onto my mind in a way it practically helps me keep time. But it's almost been a year and I'm at least okay now, but I still don't understand what happened. I live with a daily melange of feelings of love and hatred, and no place to put them but let them simmer in me and maybe, if I'm lucky, they'll just evaporate.

See just a year ago, my heart would change in a way I didn't think it ever could – though, truthfully, it also didn't. Maybe some people can do the love and let go thing, but I'm not cut out for that. Just a year ago, in spite of this, I finally managed to let go. Then a mere few weeks later a man came into my life and casually charmed me off my feet. Impossibly cool, but aloof so it didn't seem to matter to him that he was cool...which made him even more attractive. (Yes, I see the cliche.) I usually have a good read on people, I kind of get how we work and how we interact with each other, I feel like I can often see through people to their motivations and values. Yet somehow I got duped.

I tried to move on, thought I was ready and it would take someone else proving to me that not all that's left out there are emotionally stunted men who are so cool they'll break your heart without remorse -- icy. I tried to move on and one mediocre or crappy instance after another, I'm finding myself feeling discouraged and yet with clarity. The good old-fashioned way really knocked the wind out of me a time or two, so I go through these phases of attempting to date the modern way: apps. It always seems to go a variety of ways, none of which are successful. There was the zero chemistry guy, the CSG doppleganger who was also too cool for human decency and communication, and the guy who doesn't know what "no" means, or "owe" or "don't". That last one, left me missing the aloof emotionally closed-off guy because at least he was respectful of my body and my "no". And that left me missing the one that couldn't be. Which then made me realize, I need to get comfortable.

I hate being single, because compared to having someone who knows all about your life, checks in on you and thinks about you daily, and is gaga for you, and on and on – compared to that, being single sucks. I wish there were a more eloquent way to say it, but I don't have the patience and, well, it's a thought for another time.

Almost a year ago I was high and dry in life - no job, broken heart still mending, long overstaying in a place that was meant to be temporary. I can't help but look back at that version of myself and envy her. She didn't know life was just winding up to take another swing the second she'd get back up, that that handsome guy stealing glances at the coffee shop would break her heart all over again, too soon and too carelessly. I envy her because she didn't know it would get so hard again.

The me now? She knows that you don't find the real good stuff all that often and you can't force it where it isn't. She knows that no one's really deserved her since the first one. She knows that was special and to look for something like it. Hoping? That's another story.

To Put Off the Conscience

My life seems to say to me: remember that time you got your heart broken, oh and that OTHER time, and when you didn't matter to that person enough to have a conversation, or not enough to that person to bother to see you, or that person to pay attention to you?

And it stings. And aches. The place where the wound was gets poked and prodded again, the moment it seems to heal.

And I wish I knew what it was like to be able to put off the conscience and do what I wanted to, even if it hurt others...and yet, there are constant reminders of what that looks like in our world. It is the reason anyone is on the receiving end of something painful, even life-threatening, and I don't want to be the cause of that in someone else's life.

Pain can teach you that you need to harden yourself, or it can teach you not to be hardened toward others; rather to value them. Wounds can cause you to unleash pain on others like a wrath and continue to ache on the inside in a way that oozes outward to infect - or they can cause you to take care not to be a hypocrite with intentional actions and words.

More than anything I find myself prone to indignation that these are the ways we find it acceptable to act and to use the privilege of the time we've been given and one another's company.

Life in the Gray

Lately I'm floating on a sea of so many questions, so much uncertainty. I'm someone who likes to ask, likes to seek, and likes to find. It's been a while since I've found much, but I'm still asking and still seeking. Some of it has been quite painful, I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge the depth of pain that has also been with me through the questions. But I ask. And I seek.

One thing that is not a concrete "answer" but one I'm finding as I ask the questions is that some things in life are just in the gray. There has to be space for wonder and questioning and seeking and growing and stretching and withdrawing. We seem to want so badly to have answers, sorting everything by rule into the black or the white. But I've been finding I cannot live without the questions; I cannot push them away and live as if they do not beckon me to examine them.

Even as I write this, I am sitting a few feet away from a family eating dinner at this same cafe. The couple's young son is questioning everything, and it's like music to my ears. Drink it in young one. Ask the questions and seek to understand.

Because the thing I'm learning is I'm better for seeking to understand rather than just taking things as they come, without wonder. Some answers are harder to come by, and may look more gray than black or white. Learning to live in the discomfort of questions unanswered has made me stronger, increasing my endurance for the gray of life – of which there is so much, if we're honest with ourselves. At first, this state of unknown was taxing, and it's still less comfortable than certainty, but it's helping me become better and stronger, and more empathetic.

And I think that's an option with everything we encounter in life. Not just what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but every pain, every hard place can be something that breaks you down a bit more, or helps you become stronger, and better, even if worn. I'm not to the 'better' yet – though I feel good today – I'm seeing more how there is courage in facing the fear of the unknown and the pain.

Scary Moments, Strength, & Wonder Woman

So if you haven't noticed lately, I'm still a mess. And in the past few days it's felt quite heavy. Maybe it's just going back to work after laying around existing and attempting to tune out physical pain for two weeks. In the heaviness, I've found myself angry; I'm angry that he put me here without remorse. I'm angry that I find myself in pain that's hard to wade through and keep afloat in. I'm angry that I was more committed and it hurts like hell.

I've been struggling a lot, and constantly trying to figure out where I can fit in therapy, can I afford therapy, and where do I find a therapist that I actually like, and can I practice therapy someday when I feel right now like I'm falling apart, and how does one get medicated? Like I'm that kind of mess. I should be working right now, but I just can't get my weary heart to write about insurance.

So just the other day I was thinking about it all. I read a past facebook post about God only knows what (I post all the time). I thought about how I used to be strong. At first this thought bothered me, it's been a recurring thought throughout this...thing, and it made me sad. But then I remembered something else: I was just as vulnerable at my strongest. Feeling weak and broken doesn't mean I'm no longer strong.

I saw Wonder Woman last night, and without giving too much away I'll say: I needed it. You've got this incredibly powerful, strong woman and a part of her strength and her very purpose is to be courageous enough to believe in the good of mankind – and then do something about it. I caught myself feeling empowered watching a super hero movie. She was both fierce and vulnerable. It was brave to believe the things she did, yet she wasn't spared the pain it brought.

And you see, I sort of realized it's hard to be strong when being strong also means being vulnerable. Sometimes, or what can feel like oftentimes, that vulnerability gets you hurt. Loving with your heart wide open can leave you faint and weary. But I came to another conclusion, too...

Tonight I saw a friend of mine going through it. She wearily asked, "How can it be like this when I've done all I can?" Her sentiments resonated with me, not just from my recent relationship debacle, but from life. Then I found myself saying something to her that, in my own haze of struggle, I needed to hear:

You're strong! Don't let a scary moment make you forget it.

I have been stuck in a real pain that I'm still not fully sure how to dismantle and I certainly haven't had luck wishing away, but I can choose strength. It's hard, and it doesn't feel good, or secure sometimes, but I can draw on my strength. It isn't gone, I can call it up and find it again.

Just yesterday I told myself I can and will be strong again...but by this morning at my desk I forgot. As I said just a bit ago, I decided I don't want to let the scary moments make me forget my strength anymore.

What We Do When We Avoid Pain

My life has felt like a mess. My worldview is teetering on edge because I can't make sense out of so many painful things happening over and over. Being teased with good things, only to have them ripped away cruelly. I've felt like a broken record because I know I've talked about it so much, but I also feel like I've hardly been listened to. It's why I write about it.

A minute to at most a few minutes into talking through any one painful part of my life and how stuck I feel, I'm usually offered a solution. As if the thing that's been on cycle through my mind for weeks and months can suddenly make sense to someone who listened to me talk about it for a minute – suddenly they have an answer. Usually it's that "everything will be fine", or it'll turn around. I believed that, for a while. Then it felt like things were turning around, until they weren't anymore. Until something else bad happened, followed by something else; until I lost the job I loved when I was house shopping, until I got my heartbroken yet again, and then after having my hope naively reignited, having it crushed again. Stuck in places of pain like being in a boat with a hole, bailing water out as it comes in.

I'm still sad a lot. I'm still looking for sense and meaning a lot. And the thing is I just want that to be heard and held, not fixed because I have the utmost doubt that just chinning up will fix this. For so long I felt not like myself, so long that it now feels like the new normal. At the same time, I still feel like I have to argue to have the pain in my life recognized and not brushed over.

I know: people don't know what to say to pain and often they just say something. I'm getting used to that, learning to have grace for it. But I also wish there was a greater effort to learn to think before speaking to a person in pain. I catch myself doing it, too, all the time. If there's one valuable thing this time in my life has taught me, it's to take pause before responding to a person in pain. My whole life I was that positive, look-at-the-bright-side person, so I still do it too, but I'm striving and learning to allow people to be in their reality.

See, being the one who sits and really listens, believing for something better without voicing it – that is a link to the hope outside the reality that the darkness hides. Sometimes life can be so painful, it makes it incredibly difficult to hope; it becomes scary, not just like how hope is often a risk but a thing that is truly hard to do. When we avoid another's pain by assuming they can take hold of hope, we leave them in that darkness to fend for themselves.

In these months that have stretched on farther than I'd ever imagined they would, the best words I've heard over and over again came from my best friend: "That must be so hard." They didn't make the pain disappear, they soothed simply by being with me in the reality that this is so hard.

What I Learned About Love

I can't tell you how many times I've thought to myself how pathetic I must be in the last two months. Pathetic! Constant ups and downs of missing someone who won't even acknowledge me, who didn't even value me enough to dignify me with a face-to-face conversation about the end of our relationship. I've missed that guy so much and it has felt pathetic. Why do I miss him? I have trouble letting go.

Even amongst feelings of anger and half-joking comments to my friends about how I'd like to key his car, I missed him. A lot. For weeks I've woken up with him as the first thought in my head, several of those times starting my day with a cry because this is what it is and there's not a damn thing I can do. I cared for someone and I miss him, and that hurts.

It's a familiar process, even though it's a different relationship than my last. The other one only just stopped hurting, it seems, but otherwise still feels fresh so I can't help but note similarities in processing another chance at love lost. See I thought after my first relationship I'd never feel excited or passionate about another man. I'm a loyal person, so I thought no one else would make me feel that way, could be that comfortable and easy. I thought I'd always feel like he was missing from my life. And for a long several months it did. But even after the dust fully settled, and I'd even moved on and been hurt by another, I realized I still love him. I'm not pining, I have no desire to pursue anything, but I still care.

I noticed it a time or two over the last year, and figured it was just that not enough time had passed. Especially before having another relationship, I thought I just hadn't fully found a way to move on. While that's partially true, the attachment was real and the separation painful, felt unnatural. And that's where I came to realize something: I was wrong when I thought I'd never feel a strong connection and love again, as if I thought I'd spent what I had to give. I wouldn't recommend trying to love someone romantically more than once (I hope, if anyone else, it's only one more) because it wears on the heart, but it can be done.

Just in this past week I started to feel normal again, not like I'd forever wake up each morning and cry, prying myself out of bed. The strange thing is that even while starting to feel normal and not broken, I still miss him. I still pray for him (nearly the only prayer I can muster, lately). I still just want to sit on his couch and listen to music and talk – and that thought still makes me tear up. Even though I'm starting to heal, still...

What I learned is that love isn't meant to be a passing thing, which is why ending a relationship that had it is so very painful. The love continues to persist in you without its object. Hence grief commonly becomes a companion. Painfully it doesn't displace love. But neither did loving once already inhibit me from it again. The beautiful, hopeful thing is that it's not all used up; I have not run out of love. Same in romantic relationships as with friendships long gone, the love leftover doesn't keep us from finding that there's more to be had and more to be given.

And the stuff that remains, it's okay.

Skateboarding, Good Tunes, & the Hots

It was about a week or two ago when I began to feel a little self-conscious that I'm still stuck on this confusing, painful end. I started to wonder if there's something wrong with me. I date a guy for a little over a month and fall head over heels hard, but it ends abruptly. Then I wait idly by for weeks in intermittent fits of anxiety to find out if he would break my heart more or indeed take me back as pondered over a lengthy cup of coffee just days after breaking up. The answer [eventually] was a firm and unkind no, which I then struggled to make sense of. 

And it was a week or so ago that I thought there must be something wrong with me for missing this guy in my life who hurt me so. It occurred to me I needed a fresh start, a ray of hope: I needed to go on a date. Where does one procure a date these days? On any number of phone apps, duh. Much to my surprise, I quickly had one set up. I thought, I've dated two guys who were "my type" and had an eery amount of interests in common, maybe I should give someone I wouldn't expect a chance. I'd begun to think that having common interests was a pitfall to my relationships, so maybe I ought to look for someone who had the big things and whatever else might not matter. 

Well, moral of the story is and will always be trust your gut. Which is to say, it was a dud. Part way through the date, a mere hour in, I felt relatively apathetic (in hindsight it probably also meant I wasn't actually ready to go on a date). I thought of the way I felt about Cute Coffee Shop Guy on our first date, or the Bearded Lutheran (I'm giving him that moniker as I'm sure he'd like it anyway) on our first date – pure excitement, intrigue, giddiness. Throughout processing the big breakup last year, and even this one, I've had people try to convince me that all that isn't important. This uninspiring date helped me to see otherwise. 

The problem with either failed relationship wasn't ever that there was a strong mutual attraction, great chemistry, and a plethora of shared interests. Both failed for other, greater reasons that couldn't be superceded by the attraction, the chemistry, or the interests. That doesn't make their ends any less painful, or me any more hopeful, but at least I know I don't have to want for something I don't want. Of course I don't love the prospect of spending my life as a single person, but I'd rather share my life with someone I'm excited about every single day – even in their weak moments – than with just any old warm body who looks good on paper. 

The blasé date helped me realize you can't force the rich, exciting, deep relationship to happen, but it sure feels fortunate and magical when you do stumble into one.

The Familiarity of Grief

Time
Odd considering I'm late most of the time to anything, I am a keen observer of time. Okay, so maybe it's in a different sense. Anniversaries tend to stick in my memory. Recently I noticed I may have a knack for knowing any given toddler from church's age in months. I'm interested in the passage of time and how it seems to change in spite of our measurements of its passing.

Sometimes days seem to come and go in warp speed, and we drink them in with insatiable thirst. Other times, the hours, minutes, seconds seem to trudge a saunter as we hunger for sleep to take us until the next painstakingly slow day begins. I've been having the latter kind of days, just sort of waiting to feel good.

Recently, I was telling someone about my Europe trip from last May and I realized it was almost a year ago. The memory felt so distant and foreign that I was convinced for a second that it didn't even happen. I remember thinking, huh, I've been to Rome, and then thinking, that was an unbelievably long, painful year I could stand to forget.

That Old Familiar Feeling
When it really hit me that this relationship was over, I was scared, because I've known this pain so I know that the only way out is through. Last week I found myself wondering why I felt the same heavy sadness from a much shorter relationship than the longer one whose grief swallowed an entire year of my life – and it hit me, that's it: I'm grieving! (Cue the Simon and Garfunkel...) Somehow it hadn't occurred to me that, yet again and so quickly, I was experiencing a loss and mourning a possibility. The moment I recognized it as grief, I was oddly relieved. As if it's any bit disarmed by my seeing it.

Sadness hits me in the strangest moments. As part of an important revelation I've stopped avoiding it, but started letting it roll over me.

I went to Ikea last night to scheme and daydream about my new home, but it didn't occur to me until I exited the freeway that I went there with Coffee Shop Guy on a date a la 500 Days of Summer (unbelievable irony here on so many levels). Never thought the sight of sectional couches could make me nauseous and weepy, but oh they did... The moment I hit the display floor my stomach felt tight and the entire time I held back tears. We'd also picked out his new couches at a different scandinavian store just days into our then adorable sweeping romance.

In a strange moment of what felt like taunting and cruel serendipity, a little boy came running up alone and stood sobbing in the marketplace, having lost his mom and hurt his hand. It took all the weary strength I have in me not to lose it looking at his crocodile tears and subconsciously thinking, yes, losing someone, being hurt, and feeling alone is incredibly scary.

Grief is Unique and Common
While the longing to seek solace in someone I inherently cannot was familiar, this time different things hang me up than those I tripped over last year. Not more, not less, just different. Grief is grief, yet each instance of it is completely unique; each pushing through incredibly necessary. And once you know it's what's happening to you, that recognition can allow you to give yourself a little more grace for feeling like a mess.

I would dare to say grief is the worst part of human existence. It's a suffering you can't do anything to remedy, rather simply endure. It's impossible to articulate, yet it haunts you. It sneaks up and pounces when you're unsuspecting or busy. It tells you lies and then smacks you with the truth. It turns your reality on its head, forcing you into a new reality you don't want to be a part of. Maybe, if you've known it before, you'll know it when it comes around, but maybe not. If you haven't known it yourself, have grace for others and don't rush them through it. Each step forward – even the two back – is important to moving through a mourning. I revel the thought of the impact it could have if we all learned to have more grace, understanding, and compassion for the pain of life and its wake.

The only way to not be swallowed by it is to notice it is washing over you and roll with the waves.

Unraveled

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

Somehow it happened. I've always been pretty sure of myself but then I unraveled. I've spent more days in the last year (plus) wishing I didn't feel the way I did, than being okay with how I feel. So many days have been sad days or lonely days, hard days. I've wondered a time or two if this is me now: a sort of cynical, "realistic" person who buries herself in television and struggles to get out of bed nearly every day.

Questions I didn't know I had have come to the surface. The basis of everything about life is up in the air. I've begun questioning why I believe certain things that I just always have. I'm longing to experience God tangibly as I have so much of my life, and yet I feel like I'm wandering a desert in circles. Explaining this to just about anyone has been impossible, I never quite feel like I've done it justice just how uncomfortable I feel with myself and the questions. I'm stuck between feeling completely apathetic and yet not being able to live life without a deeper meaning that makes sense.

I took a break from attending church for a few weeks, then last week I went back. No certain reason other than Easter seemed like as good a time as any to break a church fast (it happened to coincide with lent, oddly). I realized I'd really missed my pastor. He's an interesting and insightful speaker, and tends to be realistic and honest. That's what kept me at the same church for so long, I liked that the pastor wasn't acting holier than others, but self-deprecating. His message on Easter was the exact one I needed, honest in that sometimes it feels like we're still losing. I've been in a long season that feels like losing, and it's so easy for anyone to look at it and say it will turn around or that God loves me, but those things don't change the reality; those things haven't eased the pain, they haven't pulled me out of bed in the morning.

Thankfully I have had my wits about me enough to know that if I don't show up things will only get worse.

Easter was a special occasion but I decided to show up to church again today. I sat in the back because I was late, which is usually a death-sentence to my concentration. Naturally I was in and out of the sermon versus my thoughts. A few times something would hit me and I felt on the edge of tears. Then came the singing. It wasn't anything particular in the songs, I just decided totalk to God as I often do during worship and sat down. I thought about all the questions, the doubt, the loneliness, the distance, the pain. Tears started creeping down my face seemingly out of nowhere.

I feel so out of place and like I'm in pieces, but I don't even understand it – yet somehow it was important that I sit in the back row at church and let slow tears evolve into an ugly cry. I needed to show up, just for that. There aren't any easy answers, there's no quick solution, there's no cure, but there's space for ugly crying in the back and hoping that hope returns and that things make sense again. Somehow, someday.

Rollercoaster vs. Intention

In the great yonder that is adulthood, it's always kind of been my thing to live my life with intention. I've always sort of known what I wanted to go after, or what I wanted to do and what I didn't. I've had this sense of who I am, and who I'm not. Up until the year from hell. Since I've felt like I'm away from myself; like I'm waiting to wake from a weirdly mediocre dream. I've just been living my life.

It occurred to me recently that after I lived in Paris and traveled through Vietnam, I was convinced I was going to change the world. That was six years ago now, and all I've done is live my life. I haven't done anything all that grand. And after the bad year and its residue trickling into this year in a way I didn't expect, I don't feel like I'm living with much intention.

I've been stuck on a crazy rollercoaster and there have been some things that have stood out along the twists and turns and sudden drops. A listening ear is a powerful healing tool. Showing up is key. When you feel broken into all sorts of weird pieces with sharp edges, the very thing you need around you is someone who can handle that. Being that someone to another takes intentionality.

For several years, my best friend lived two states away – a six to eight hour drive. We talked on the phone for an hour or two every week, and probably texted an obnoxious amount. She moved back to the cities two years ago now, and since we have seen each other nearly every week. For a while, it was Thursday nights. No matter what other thing I had, Thursdays were off limits. I think that consistency has saved my life. The intentionality we both put into our friendship makes it possible and meaningful. The amount of time we've logged filled with laughter, tears, and food is invaluable. She's my best friend because I can count on her and she uses intentionality in the way she does relationship.

Not long ago, I realized I don't have so many of those consistent relationships. I have flippantly flitted around and made a lot of weak friendships on fun but not a lot of effort. That's not to say the people aren't worthwhile, but the depth isn't if it detracts from having more relationships that are of greater depth.

Finally I find myself at the end of the current rollercoaster, a dating relationship that looked like a fun easy coaster at the beginning and turned out to be a high-speed nonstop wooden corkscrew. As it pulls to a stop, I'm of course nauseous and disoriented. There are the people who are there to help you off, hold a bag while you barf, and put an arm around you to help you stumble away.

I'm really tired of being the mess. It's been a while since I've felt like as big of one as I've been for over a year now. Whenever things have been good for anything that classifies as a stretch, I'm hesitant to admit it to anyone who asks, for fear of crying wolf and being a sad hermit mere moments later. I look at the ones who've been there for me, and I want to be them – not for the lack of my pain, but because I admire them. I want to be the one living with intentionality again, not the mess that needs someone to just listen for an hour. I want to be the one that sacrifices bedtime because her friend needs someone to go to a concert with instead of being alone. I want to be the one who listens and says I'm sorry.

It can be easier to live without being intentional. Flutter around on whatever wind may carry you. But then you're not the master of the direction your life is headed. There's so much of life that's out of our control, such as whether someone loves us back, but there's just as much that is a choice, such as loving without expectation of return. I ran myself dry giving away all my love in the wrong places, but when I get filled back up...I hope I've learned enough to use it well.

The Thing About Enduring

The song's words hit me, the beat matching the pace of my feet, and I felt something starting to crawl up out of me – don't breakdown at the gym.

A treadmill run is different than a run on pavement, concrete, and dirt. I listen to music on a treadmill so I don't have to hear the repetitive thud of my feet with each labored step, let alone the grunts of the guys who are trying too hard in the nearby weight-lifting area. I have a playlist of trusty songs that help set the mood. Tunes or not, I use running as a time to think through things in my life. I focus in on something and I "run it out", or run toward it. I know it could sound silly, but for some reason when my body is in that intense of motion and I'm pushing that hard, it's the perfect time to think through the tough things and remind myself I can survive; remind myself I am enough.

That run, that day, that one familiar song hit me in just the right way.

I'll give you one more chance
To say we can change or part ways
And you take what you need
And you don't need me
...
And you know you don't need me
And if I recover
Will you be my comfort
Or it can be over
Or we can just leave it here

It nearly knocked the wind out of me and my eyes welled up. I fought it. I pushed and breathed through it. And then I thought about how a friend told me the other day she was proud of me for enduring. Although I questioned if it were true, I also immediately thought she hit it right on the mark. I have endured things I didn't know I could, and I am enduring right now. Endurance isn't easy or pretty, but it takes strength, patience, and drive.

To endure means to continue, last or survive; to suffer without yielding, to suffer with patience.

I thought about how I got where I did with running, I had to push past a lot of resistance in myself. In moments like that one, and usually a moment in every run, there's a choice. It's an incredibly fine line, but it's still a choice: push on in spite of a block, physical or mental – or slow down, even stop. Usually if you can push, there's this feeling like you're weightless, your breaths are effortless, and your body is a machine. I lovingly call it the zone. I hope for a stretch of it in every run.

Sometimes a song will put me in the zone and that day that song did. I realized that enduring through something in life is the same. Like running, if you don't press on through a difficulty, you don't get to the good stuff. You have to endure to get to the place where you are floating and breathing easy and moving forward.

The summer before last, an injury caused me to take several months off from running. When I came back to it, it was so difficult I was sure all that I'd put in over the span of about three years was lost. I'd lost my breath, and when that was working my muscles weren't, and if it wasn't one of those it was my motivation. It became so much work it wasn't enjoyable and I could not get to the place that made it all worth while. My body was no longer a machine. However, over only a few weeks recently, pushing through the discomfort and the disappointment has brought me back to the place where I can do it and I love it.

And that's the thing about enduring, it takes an intentional push to get through to a better place.

Choosing Compassion Over Spite

Square peg, round hole; square peg, round hole.

This phrase was bouncing in my head a few weeks ago because I figured maybe wishful thinking had disguised itself as hope again. Hope is a tricky bugger. See, I've been learning this thing about my gut and how I should listen to it, it's where I felt hope. I can't really explain it better than that, or in a way that's more relatable to a non-intuitive person. My gut is my compass. Where I get in trouble is when logic gets involved...

It bothers me at a deep level when someone assumes because I'm whatever personality type, I don't know how to engage logic. To the contrary in fact, logic has been known to save the day! It helps diffuse my emotions about a situation, or healthily defer them altogether. But I struggle in that there are places where logic just doesn't cut it. There are times when, not emotions, but choice takes the wheel. Some things just don't make any sense, but we do them. We could blame them on faulty emotional moments, or we could recognize that they're human moments. They're not logical, but they're not fully to be blamed on intuition either. Like love.

As I struggle through being hurt by someone, the logical side of me strives to make sense out of why that hurt is so easily overlooked. It's something I've never been able to make sense out of, because as an adult I see that my response is to do something hurtful in return; act out of spite. I had never fully realized my capability for spite until the last few weeks. I'd never been able to name it: when I get hurt, I want to hurt in return. That's something I've known for a long time, but I had never put the name to it and found a reason to disarm myself. Once I was able to name it as spitefulness, it's been much easier to spot it coming into play and let go of it. It's been easier to make a choice of my actions.

Just tonight I realized something that's incredibly important to my worldview: I have a strong, near-insatiable desire to understand where someone's coming from. When I'm hurt by someone I love who claims to love me, the questions begin to flow. They're echoing and deafening: why? Now, admittedly there's some part of me, especially aspiring to practice therapy someday, that will have to learn to let go of even the "why" to someone's actions or speech. At the same time, the altruistic search for possibilities as to why someone would, say, run a red light, helps steer my heart toward compassion as opposed to anger. Maybe they're going to the hospital. Maybe they're late to a job interview after months of unemployment. Logic saves the day when it's able to show me the way to compassion.

I pondered tonight for a second, among days of intermittent seconds of pondering, why love wouldn't work. You could throw all the love and good patience you have at someone, and it might not work. Every single factor could be in the right position, and still, it may fail. I struggle to make sense of it... However, if for a second of those seconds of wondering I can find compassion within me, it proves me right. If I can find my way to making sense out of the rejection of love laid down, I can prove it's merit still stands. See, compassion would have me understand that some wounds need to be healed and some perceptions addressed before love will be welcomed back in. Some adaptations of love in the past may have been damaging, skewing the perceptions and values of it for the future.

However, the lens does not change the reality that is seen through it — save for by perspective.

This is a place my intuition and my logic can coexist. It's a place of compassion for the past that others have known (same as I have) and how it shapes and even warps their perceptions of the very reality before them. Sometimes, sadly, the reality they see cannot be altered or corrected, or highlighted. Quite simply sometimes those differences can only be held; acknowledged in the heart, with honor for the pain of another. And still can love be dared to be chosen, because it is not altered or weakened by the lens, but a strong and beautiful statement. It is still a willful choice of acceptance and admiration. Another place intuition and logic coexist.