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?

Unidentifying as a Christian

I've gone around in circles about it in my mind, how to talk about where I'm at – whether to, or whether to keep biting my tongue through one uncomfortable conversation or comment after another. Over the years I have learned that when it comes to pain, given the options to keep silent or speak your truth, truth is always best.

My truth is that I am astonishingly uncomfortable with christianity. I have not attended church regularly for nearing a year. It's been freeing, but it's also been incredibly painful. My worldview, once narrow, rose-colored glass, is now wide open and seemingly boundless, true colors screaming. It's not unlike how very sheltered children sometimes later struggle to function independently in adulthood. Not viewing the world and life through one distinct vintage lens has me feeling a little lost at times.

"Pray for me because...," the words echo within me like a pinball ricochets off walls. I don't really pray anymore. But I can't say that.

You see, I had enough of life's pain, let alone blatantly invalidating responses to it from Christians. Whether it was a 'part of God's plan' for me to question if I had the will to carry on living, or that He would 'give me something better' if I just remained joyful – you know, while suppressing the grief I had festering inside me – I couldn't keep subjecting myself to a club where reality isn't real. A group in which God is attributed with all the pain we endure in life, because He at least has a good motive in the end.

And don't get me wrong, I tried. About two years I spent feeling unbalanced, unfulfilled, sad, and yet I showed up waiting for that feeling to be zapped out of me. Sometimes, I think I thought it was [out of me]...only to see it rear its head again later. Until one Sunday, I couldn't keep fighting to be there, hurting and feeling like a heretic for it. Sadly, after nearly a decade at the same church, I could no longer sit through a service without my skin crawling and my heart racing, my stomach churning. So I stopped. I got up and walked out.

If I'm honest, I hadn't been praying much for a while. Any time I felt something resembling God's presence, it was conveniently interrupted by an exhortation to be even more loudly faithful. I found I needed to protect myself by stepping away.

Little did I know, all sorts of questions were laying in wait for this moment. Years of being in leadership in the church, growing up in the religion, and suddenly I was stumbling into big, difficult questions I never imagined I'd be asking. I also sighed a breath of relief that I was done striving! No more constantly attempting to whittle away my imperfections and become some perpetually joyful saint seemingly impenetrable by life's tragedies. No more being forced to be alone in my pain in a crowd.

I didn't even give it more thought, I sort of walked away and kept going. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a wild heathen or a satanist. But deciding that it was okay to leave church if church wasn't a place that could appropriately address pain, that was a decision that allowed me to begin to heal. I was able to be alone with my pain without anyone trying to force it to become something else; force it to be okay when it felt furthest from it. And that was so freeing. As I look back on it now, it's disturbing how hard it was to be a person grieving and angry in church. I felt like there was no room for me to be there, not that version of me.

It has led to all kinds of trying to parse out God from The Church. Having gone to a public university and worked several places that weren't christian-affiliated, I wasn't ignorant to the fact that the world doesn't understand Christians – in a bad way. It's become even more apparent how invalidating Christians can be of the rest of the world's experience of life. It's become difficult to identify as Christian because sometimes Christianity looks like an extrapolation of what it was meant to be at its core: a way of life centered on love as a gift of self and inclusivity in spite of differences, brokenness, and imperfection.

Since letting these questions marinate in my subconscious, I have struggled to re-engage with Christianity. And yet, I haven't dumped God. I don't really know what to say to him, or how our relationship looks without The Church. But I'm not ready to explore that. That's one reason I share this all, that every well-meaning or assuming comment is like a little scrape on a still-healing wound. You didn't know, and how could you? No one ever expects a faith-filled person to slingshot the other direction into doubt. But as a good friend recently said to me, "I think God is not so insecure as to be distraught over your doubts." To which I'll add, I think God is not so impatient as to abandon me as I process through pain.

Therein lies the second reason I share: I am not alone in this experience of doubting and struggling to find an appropriate way to view the world and perhaps still believe in a good, loving God.

So, whether this encourages practicing Christians to try to validate others' reality, or reassures fellow questioners that doubting and pain are normal parts of life and faith, my story serves its purpose.

The Failure in Every Story

Think about stories. Every story has a series of ups and downs, and if it's really good, some of them will make you hold your breath until you know what happens next. Will June get to Canada? Will Frodo make it up Mt. Doom? Will Harry live through a battle with He Who Shall Not Be Named? Will Bella ever grow a personality?

Somewhere in history, this universal truth was discovered that every tale has archs and valleys, moments of victory and moments that look like failure. The thing that's interesting is that stories go on from the low points.

Have you ever seen a movie that ended on a moment of failure? I have, and I always feel so frustrated that a writer would be so focused on the lowness of life; passing up on their moment to tell a truly inspiring story of rising above, of getting up again from a fall.

I've had a lot of failure moments in my life that at the time feel like the poignant end to a really disappointing story. Only it hasn't ended that way.

Now I'll always be the first to acknowledge that not every life's story is allowed to end on a note of perseverance. We know that some lives are taken too soon, some end their lives too soon and it's hard to understand.

In some ways, this is to be a message of hope to combat feelings of failure: This isn't the end of the story.

You see, in every narrative there is a moment when the protagonist musters up the courage to move forward, even if only a shred of it. When the wind is knocked out of them, they catch their breath (which is only human to do, after all) and then they give it another go, this time perhaps with a different understanding and a different drive. Sometimes it leads to another hill and valley, other times to their triumphant scaling of a high summit.

To experience failures and victories is human, and it simply means we are living. We can choose the paths of least resistance, the smallest inclines and attempt to avoid difficulty and failure...or we can enjoy the trek for all it is, and learn from it along the way.

Take heart, this is only a moment in the journey and there is much ahead.

A New Start

I feel this huge relief in it being a new year, even if it's just a calendar thing.

This past year led me to believe I was getting the redemptive things when in reality I just got progressively more hurt. I've been hoping there's a way to somehow put those things in the past even though my heart is yet weary. Somehow, the thought of a clean slate - cliche as it may be - gives me the slightest bit of peace.

It's really hard to believe the future doesn't only hold more pain, but some part of me does, surely that is worth something.

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.

Never Again Mine

My heart broke all over again;
I cracked in half.
I don't know how to love in part
and the dying off is painful –
Being pulled apart
While trying to hold
myself together
But at the thought
again I crumble:
You will never again be mine,
Though always
in my heart.