still fighting it

everybody knows it sucks to grow up

but everybody does

it’s so weird to be back here

i’ve written almost nothing since i finished my degree. and i haven’t written like this, to just dump my brain because my insides are twisted up in such a way that i can not properly human until i write some words about it – in quite a while.

everything is so wild. 

that’s it. 

that’s what i’m here to say. 

living is wild. 

obviously the new year has me feeling some type of way about life, but really it’s the whole year, or the last five years - that have me knotted up in my feels. 

life is really just our own personal collection of weird, and sometimes devastating, little side quests that continue until we run out of health. we believe we are making choices, charting futures, running towards things, and running away from others. but life happens, harder and harder it seems. and all those prepped and promised plans get lost underneath the day to day. buried under jobs and marriages and kids. we grow up. our priorities shift. and we eventually have little midlife crises that try to kill us. 

i never called mine that. i called mine a mom-life crisis and thought it would easily resolve itself after a couple of solo trips on planes to remind me i was more than just a mom living in a shitty middle american small town. I developed a loose habit of booking plane tickets, leaving the kids with my husband, and expecting to return fixed.  

but turns out i needed more than a jenny lewis show in san diego, a couple of nights in vegas, or thirty-six hours in new york city. my mom-life crisis morphed into an entire officially licensed  Identity Crisis™ that pretty much forced me to get better or die.

i was stuck. i hated everything and i blamed my husband for bringing me back to this stupid town with no culture and no good food and i reminded him of it every minute of every day.

my insides felt liquid. 

mucked. 

a caterpillar in a chrysalis prison built for itself. 

digging through shadows

and tearing out pieces to hold over a flame

hoping each one was the right one to burn

the one to fix it all

i hated myself

i thought my husband could find a better wife 

and my kids deserved a better mom 

and that they would all be better off without me.

and it was just the image of the kids beside the tub

of cold, cranberry-stained water

and me, blue lipped and vacant

that kept me here

i forgave the three boys, that each died on purpose

and cracked into my heart deeper than any boy alive ever did.

because i understood them in a way i didn’t want to

i traded my anger and felt selfish instead

for expecting them to stay, 

soaked in branded grief. 

living – 

is wild

i can’t draw a straight line from then to now. it’d be impossible to pinpoint any one thing, or series of things, that got me from there to here. i went to therapy. i read a lot of books. i went back to school. i read more books. i got a bachelor's degree. i took bubble baths and danced in the bathroom mirror alone and baked bread. i got big tattoos and pierced in new places. i read more books. i got a master’s degree. and i got a grown up job.

i’m back in the place where i started twenty years ago - working at the same junior college i attended, living in the same small town i swore i’d never call home again. (never say never, kids!)

the ghosts still live here. all the skeletons and the demons.

the emotionally broken version of me would say i failed us.

but, i think i fixed us. i think i’m supposed to be doing exactly this.

and i’m – happy about it?

which is a weird thing for me to say out loud.

because i’m a little confused about how i’m supposed to be happy

when i’m so good at being sad.