I received a message this week from a former version of myself by way of a journal I started in the fall. I have had an on-again-off-again relationship with journaling over the years, and as I’m sure others can attest, typically when I’m “on” it’s not because things are going great.
My most recent streak of journaling was prompted when a relationship, one I thought for a moment in time could be the relationship, ended. Recognizing that I needed an outlet for my introspection and grief that wasn’t just unloading on my friends and family, I picked up a cute journal with a cheerful abstract pattern on it that my mom had given me and went to town. I brought it everywhere with me. I forced myself to write something, anything, every day about how I was feeling and gave myself a numerical score each day from 1–10 rating how I felt — intending of course on eventually looking back and seeing a very neat upward curve.
Fast forward to Monday, and I was having one of those quarantine days where I felt emotionally all over the place. Paired with the lack of professional distractions, these days typically go one of two ways: 1) I find a way to get myself out of my funk by distracting myself with a book, calling a loved one, or exercising, or 2) I lean into the funk in a way that is unhealthy under the guise of telling myself I must “feel the feelings” or something pseudo-intellectual like that. In practice this looks like me doing all the same things I would do in scenario #1 but with the attitude and entitlement of a sullen, bitchy teenager. I will let you infer how it played out that day.
I’m not sure what (if anything) set me off, but on this day I was tired of being asked, and asking myself, what came next after my much anticipated sabbatical. I hated myself for feeling as though I had nothing to show for this time (and doubled down on the self-hatred for feeling like I needed something to show for it.) I was feeling insecure about not “having my life together” and missing artificial deadlines I put on myself. I felt lonely and deeply unsure of every decision that got me to where I was in that moment.
After weeks of circling the drain on this conclusion, I had finally pieced together how I was feeling about the opportunities and adventures I had planned for this time that were derailed by the pandemic, and why I was holding myself back from thinking about my future. Like so many others, I was mourning the loss of an alternative life and all that could have come with it. After so much time reflexively pushing away feelings of disappointment and grief in favor of an almost saccharine gratitude, I finally spoke out loud my fear of the unknown and denial of my own circumstances. I admitted to myself that I was refusing to look ahead in a real way because in doing so I’d have to acknowledge my reality today.
I spent the day feverishly trying to shoo this cloud away from over my head. I phoned friends, finished my book, and went for a run. Yet I still couldn’t quiet the voice in my head that was telling me that I couldn’t do anything right.
Later on, while distracting myself by tidying the living room, I looked up and noticed how beautiful the mountains looked in the distance as the sun was going down. Something in me felt compelled to watch the rest of the sunset. Without really thinking about it, I picked up my journal and nestled it next to me in the chair as I softened my gaze to the lilac sky. I sat in silence and spent a few fleeting moments tracing the line of the mountaintops with my eyes. I thought about what the sunset might look like from the trailheads there; what any remaining hikers or animals could see as the sun seemingly dipped into the Pacific. As the palette darkened and it became harder to discern earth from sky, I began to mindlessly flip through my journal, looking for a blank page to begin a new entry. The page I initially opened up to was dated late October.
It’s funny how even as the author of a journal it sometimes feels somewhat voyeuristic to read an old entry. I had half a mind to look over my shoulder to see if anyone would see what I was about to do. Fully expecting to read about how something had reminded me of my ex or complaints about my old job, I began to read the page and immediately knew I was meant to be re-reading this entry that day.
10/20/19
There will always be alternative paths, things and lives that could have been. I will always need to choose. And maybe that’s good. I could move all over, choose new jobs and new partners. There will always be the Sunday afternoons when I will be alone at home or walking in my neighborhood and just suddenly be struck with this feeling of “This isn’t enough. There is more.” But in those moments, what if instead of spiraling and plotting an escape, I just took a breath, looked at the sky, and said Thank you to all the lives and choices that took me to where I am?
It’s never going to feel fully figured out. When the job is good, maybe the friendships suffer. When you’re in a good relationship maybe you’ll have an itch to pick up and move abroad. I just want to be okay with where I am and feel more okay floating in that unknown. What if instead of being fearful and insecure I was courageous and put a stake in the ground and said “This is my place on earth.” Maybe not a city or a job or a partner but just me and let that be enough.
That was the entire entry. I hadn’t even given myself a rating for how I felt that day.
Reading back through old pages I can see the seeds of doubt in my old job. My need to leave a city I had come to call home. My realization that the deep, unsettled feelings that had been plaguing me hadn’t just been about a relationship ending. Pages and pages of my grappling with the isolating — yet universal — feelings of navigating young adulthood, peppered with recounts of fun nights with my friends, unexpected crushes, and notes to self. It was simultaneously profound and banal. And it was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment a mere six months later.
There are three main components of your life you can (kind of) control: The Who, The What, and The Where. Your choice in partner and community, your choice in vocation or mission, and the place you choose to call home. I sometimes think of this trinity as the face of a slot machine. You keep slipping coins in and pulling the lever, hoping for the three to align and the lights to flash and the buoyant music to affirm your CORRECTNESS in it all. But in reality it’s such a rare luxury for these things to be perfect every time. Or they are for a period of time then inevitably something changes and you must change with it (willingly or not.) So as much as I wanted to hide away and emerge only when I felt I had Everything Figured Out™, I realized that I must continue to faithfully put coins in the machine and pull the lever.
I’m grateful to all my former-selves for the choices and mistakes they made. We’re all just learning and evolving, doing the best we can with the information we have at the time. In my more forgiving moments, I can look at my days during this pandemic and gently say to myself This isn’t what you, or anyone, had planned. You are okay. In my more judgmental moments I feel like a freeloader floating along without a plan. And that’s fine. No one is her best self all the time and we need a little bit of that judgmental voice to keep us from drifting into hedonism.
I just hope that at some point I will be able to look back on my journal entries from this time and say to myself I wish she could see where we are now.
