Asters & Dandelions

Living in a world full of absolutes, black and white positions, and go hard or go homers, it is easy for a wandering soul to feel left out and left behind. Some days I wake up and I feel like I’d be willing to throw away every single thing I hold dear to me if it meant changing the world. And yet other days I wake up and decide that this cruel world has already taken far too much from me. On the days of the latter, I lay in bed before I rise and think to myself how is it possible for life to take so many pieces of me and yet here I still stand? Surely I should be broken and battered past the point of functioning. And in those moments, my mind tosses and turns and wanders back full circle to the version of me willing to set the world afire to force a change and I question: am I truly willing to throw away all the things I love to make a difference? Or have I been in survival mode for so long, throwing those things away in search of a better existence is simply reflex?

Maybe both sides of that pillow are cold truths. They are both indeed equal parts of me. Which do I follow? This may simply sound like the point of many deep discussions and clocked hours on my psychiatrist’s couch but the weight is far greater than that. These sides of the token are not simply a game of ‘this or that?’. My inability to choose a path leads me to forever feeling like I am in a race in which I was never given the map. How can I attempt to complete, yet alone win, a race if I can’t even find the finish line?

The world loves to sing that you can have it all. You do not have to choose between family and professional success. Don’t you? Am I the only lost person, alone on the seesaw of life constantly teetering between the countless definites I am forced to choose between? I have been the mother who hand made her children’s halloween costumes, the wife who cooked lavish meals for my husband to come home to, and the homemaker who completed detailed lists of spring cleaning and reorganizing every inch of my home. I have also been the mother who sat on the phone with my sobbing child pouring her heart out to me from the other side of the world because her blossoming mind cannot understand why I cannot be there to give her squeeze hugs and sing Moana on the way to school. I’ve been the wife who failed her marriage because time zones and work schedules get hectic and my phone lay on silent as I kept myself mind numbingly busy because the small talk wasn’t enough to fill the emptiness I was left with when I lay alone in bed night after night without my other half; leaving him feeling forgotten and alone. I have been the homemaker who came home to a house I bought that I had never seen, filled with items I never purchased. The truth is, regardless of what life may look like in any given moment, that is only my fishbowl. The world consists of entire oceans; tides continue to rise and fall and lives continue to push forward; with or without my presence.

And here lies me: a woman with so much passion for so many things and never enough time and always too much distance. I want to be a wife yet I long to find myself. I want to be a mother yet my passions keep me away. I want the foundation of my family yet I long to be free and wild. I want to be grounded and focused yet I long to be spontaneous and carefree. I want to have great things yet tiny voices tell me I’ll never have them. I want to be happy yet my short comings whisper to me I do not deserve it. I want to be confident yet my insecurities ring in my ears reminding me I am still not enough.

I ask myself far too often how can I move forward if I cannot choose a direction? And yet in spite of myself, as I look back at how far I have come, I have clearly skipped, crawled, leapt, and drug myself forward. So far forward in fact, that some of my darkest moments that I was sure would define my entire existence, are nearly indistinguishable; tiny silhouettes in the background of my life. I am in fact moving forward. I am not however moving in a straight line.

I spent most of my childhood in a house with not enough food and way too much hate. I grew up in a home that taught me how to provide for myself but hate everyone else in the process. Did you catch that? I did move forward as a child, even if that one step moving forward was riddled with so many steps off of the linear path, I still find myself searching for the way back.

I lived with my uncle my senior year of high school. After spending so many years of my life providing for myself, his love and guidance of how to be successful was less like a how-to book I desperately needed and much more like a waterboard of restrictions and expectations. The time I spent with my uncle can be described best as him buying a used car. He spent the next year putting so much sweat and works of love into me to build me back up from the years of over mileage my young heart carried but in the end, I felt so suffocated by all of the weight of his investment I was left resembling a car on the side of the highway. As my peers raced by on their path to success, there I sat, alone and out of gas on my way back to the linear path. Here I was again, yet another phase of life in which I surely crept forward yet still found myself far from that path I am forever seeking.

After spending the next few years traveling the same proverbial backroads far from that yellow brick road of forward growth, I found myself in the arms of my not yet husband. You know how the old story goes: first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. Here I found myself moving forward yet again. In my marriage and motherhood I found so much purpose and growth. Yet two pcs’es, three children, and six years of marriage later, I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. I no longer looked in the mirror and saw that child who knew how to provide for herself. I wasn’t sure if that young woman who was willing to throw away everything to preserve her free will was still living within me. Instead I looked in the mirror and saw an overweight woman with scars from carrying her children, bags under her eyes, not from lack of sleep but from lack of passion. The woman in my reflection was defined only by what she had poured into those she loved for so long. Her sole identity was mother, spouse, homemaker and none of it was enough to make her feel alive inside. I had spent the past six years growing a thriving and healthy family. My most worthy strides forward to date and somehow I still found myself moving in the general forward direction but further from the linear path than I had ever been.

The year that followed was arguably my most linear year to date. I watered myself and watched as I blossomed and grew. I learned to work hard on myself not because I hated myself but because I loved myself. I taught myself that I cannot plant seeds of true happiness, confidence, self love, and self identity within my children if I do not have roots deep enough within myself. I also forgave myself for a lot of side roads I had taken that led me to that point. I reminded myself that even seeds themselves must literally rip themselves apart without truly knowing if they will thrive and grow or lay buried underground never to reach the sun side of the dirt. I learned how deep the love, patience, and acceptance of my husbands love ran. I appreciated the silver lining that I was only able to see and appreciate those depths of my marriage by getting eye level to them within the trenches of those dark times in our love story. Despite so much forward movement, I still looked at the winding road that stretched out just as far ahead of me, as it did behind me and realized I was still far from my linear path.

In another attempt to find my way back to that linear path, I began my better-late-than-never career path into the Army. I won’t beat this dead horse. Those of you who have been with me since my domain switch to Asters & Dandelions, know I have documented my highs and lows within this journey quite well. For those of you who are newer, I encourage you to dive into past posts for more insight into what this journey has looked like for me. My recent posts have been repetitive enough with the same woes and worries without me recapping the most contradicting three years of my life. My time in the Army has been my most epic game of seesaw to date. This journey only highlights those contradictive thoughts I have as I lay in bed some mornings of if I wish to take over the world or if I wish to cling to what small, worthy piece of the world I have and continue to water it.

Here I sit, with the same frustrations I had as a child. Still conflicted and aimlessly wandering towards that linear path. Some days I wake up with fire in my blood willing to give every piece of me in search of any forward movement. Other days I wake up and wish I hadn’t; wish I had just continued to slumber until I gathered enough strength to get up and go fight for my place in a world that I am continually having to convince those around me I belong. My conflicting thoughts on where I belong in the world leave me falling in a middle ground where I am never “that woman” in a room. I am never the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, the most accomplished. I am simply the one who wakes up and keeps trying, even on the days when all I want to do is cry. Those lows amplified by the fact that I am so far from my piece of the world and wrapping myself up within my children and husband in the home I once cared for and forgetting about my ambitions to take over the world, even for just a moment, is painfully unobtainable.

I may be taking the scenic route forward but I am none the less still moving forward. My conflict of direction does not make me any less driven or any less worthy of great things. I promise to give myself the time I feel I never have. I promise to give myself grace even if I have to teach myself how to do so every single day. Even when my mind is playing seesaw between ‘women belong in the house and the senate’ and ‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’, I promise to give myself faith that despite how far I find myself from that linear path, I am none the less continually moving forward.