Reading through my old blogs puts me back in the mind of twenty-year-old me. She was tentatively idealistic and searching to find her place in the world. She was newly married and couldn't stop using the word husband as she was so enamored with the idea of marriage. And still rather new in love. She saw the suffering of the world and wanted to teach others how to make a difference. I'm trying to decide if that trait is still embedded in me. My experiences over the past five years have deeply impacted and changed me.
I am no longer that small-town girl who was coming into her own. So here is my letter to her.
Megan,
Right now you are experiencing what you think is the low before you figure everything out overseas. You are stressed. You hate your job. Your skin and your body are not being kind to you (because you are not being kind to them). Learn to listen to your body. It is telling you that you're stressed. Physical symptoms will always be your clue that you need to change things. And once you make that connection all the way back to your childhood, you'll be so much more self-aware. You miss Brandon deeply. I hear it in your writing. You've been so used to wrapping yourself up in this relationship that you feel a little lost without him. It's okay. This separation is good. You'll start doing the long and arduous work of becoming yourself. Embrace it. And, shockingly, someday you'll be totally fine with a break between the two of you. Time and confidence in your love will allow you to back off a bit.
The next few years of your life will not be easy. I wish I could shield you from that pain. But in between the painful moments, you will experience beauty, love, and kindness that will change your heart forever. You will become more self-aware. You will become a fierce and passionate version of yourself. You will lay on the floor and cry and want it to come to end. You will experience depression and anxiety. You will experience loneliness like never before. Your marriage will be hard. You will want to leave. It will also be silly, loving, and real. You will feel cut off from people you considered friends and you will lash out in the most immature way. You will find out who your true friends are. Especially Terra. Nobody will grow with you and be on the same page as you are like Terra.
You will turn your back completely on religion. You will learn about feminism and atheism and you will embrace those terms whole-heartedly. You will become that liberal hippy you never thought you'd be (it will take some time though).
You will make crappy friends. You will seek companionship based on who will take you and it won't end nicely. You will be a toxic person in someone's life. You will be a pretentious asshat at times. You will try to pretend you have everything together when you are falling apart inside.
Don't be afraid to let people see the broken parts of you.
You will develop esteem issues. You will lose yourself. You will gain weight. You won't appreciate the beauty of Okinawa because you just weren't in the right place.
You will become a Dog Mom. It will give you anxiety. You will think you aren't cut out for anything. Not even taking care of this dog that you got because of the crippling loneliness. That's the depression talking. It will pass. She's one of the best things that has ever happened to you. It sounds a tad banal, but she saved you. And you will love her deeply.
You WILL find your way. You will make a forever friend. You will make a lovely home, learn to cook, and understand yourself more every day. Your marriage will get better. And then worse. And then better because that's how marriage is. Becoming yourself truly is a culminating practice. You're never done. And when you make mistakes (because you will), understand that you learned from that and will try to be better next time.
Also, know that these experiences you've gone through have made you who you are today. And today is a lot brighter than five years ago. And even a year ago. It does get better. That culminating process of becoming yourself just keeps happening. I'm proud of you and everything you went through to get me where I am today.
Stay idealistic,
Megan
The theme of simplification has weighed heavily on my adult life. Growing up in an environment rife with stuff and a lack of intentionality made me want more from my life. But even with that intention of simplicity, I have fallen victim to the consumption bug that Americans are so known for. Perhaps not with the superfluous attitude that most bring to their homes and lives, but in my own way, I had too much.
I have a decorator's heart. She craves beauty, coziness, and comfort in a way that minimalist style never seems to capture.
Bare white walls symbolize military life and a lack of choice over where we live and our surroundings. It may be that the agency of choice plays into those feelings about our homes. If I have white walls, then I had to cover them with art and things. It isn't in my nature to accept the whiteness (unless of course, it is bedding or dishes).
When we moved into this house, I was stuck with the starkness of white walls on white molding on white ceilings. A very lovely home that met all of our needs was driving me crazy. I wished that I just didn't care. It hurt my heart to think of living in an environment where I would be forced to try and decorate on a budget with white walls. However, unlike our last home, we had the choice to paint in this one.
So we did. At least one room. We painted our living room a lovely shade of gray-blue and I don't regret it a bit. It allowed me to put up a few picture frames and a clock and leave it at that. And even with the simplicity of the decorations, it is comfortable and lovely.
Painting is arduous. It is messy. It takes forever. You have to get approval from housing. It would have been absurd to paint this entire house on our own. I was sick of painting before we ever finished with the living room.
So, I tried to change my mindset. I tried to embrace it. My first experiment was our bedroom. Large and comfortable with beige carpet and a large lovely window and window seat, our bedroom was the perfect opportunity to embrace a more minimalistic approach. It's not as if many people would see it (or any, really) and it isn't a room that is used for much more than sleeping. So I bought lovely white bedding and sheets. Our upholstered king-size platform bed was beige and our end tables and small dresser dark brown. The white bedding with a beige and white throw for the end of the bed and blank white walls would have been a nightmare to me a year ago.
But now... I love how simple and minimalistic it is. I love how easy it is to look clean and organized. I've embraced that room.
So I keep challenging myself. It seems hardest in the rooms that I think people will see. I want people to think of my home as comfortable and stylish and the downstairs is the place for that.
Not only do I struggle with the white walls, but I particularly struggle with the white space. You know what I mean. The areas of our homes that are bare and empty. The corners with nothing in them. The rooms with one piece of furniture.
For me, the room that bothers me the most is our dining area. It isn't large but our Japanese-style dining table isn't either. And we hardly ever use it. We almost never sit down to eat at the table and yet, I always have this desire to buy a beautiful farmhouse table and sideboard where guests could use the beautiful silver my mother bought me and have a traditional breakfast together.
We never have guests. And if we do, are they going to judge us on the state of our dining room that we never use? I hope not. But I still desire that picture-perfect environment that may lead me to be the hostess that people dream about. I have this innate desire to be a b&b I think.
But those empty corners? They plague me. In an area of our home that is almost never used I have this desire to fill it with stuff.
I'm working on accepting the white spaces in our home. Whether that is white walls or empty corners or whatever else I find to challenge my desire for consumption. So often we consume things because we believe they will make us an idealized version of ourselves. Or perhaps the things will give us status in some way. Or that those things will help us become the person we want to be.
They almost never do.
Every day I am learning the value of simplicity and intentionality in my life. My home is an outer representation of who I am. I'm trying to find the balance between minimalism, comfort, and beauty.
My home is just the start.
I’ve tried the blogging thing a few times. I don’t know why it didn’t quite work out for me.
I resented the social media time that seemed necessary and really didn’t have any quality content to share with the world. It was a fiasco. I believe I tried to use my blog as a way to make myself important in a time when I struggled deeply with self-esteem and who I am.
I went back and read some writing from my second blog (Honestly, my first blog was on Weebly and I have no idea where it is) and some of it is so unnecessary.
Clickbaity.
Cringe-worthy.
Terrible.
Writing that was silly and inauthentic and just redundant. But then some of it was… heartbreaking. I could feel the sadness and frustration with my life in Okinawa while I was writing that blog. Okinawa was such a difficult time for me.
Early marriage, move across the world, birth control depression, lack of self-esteem and worthiness, feeling dependant on my husband, and a true lack of purpose in the world made me a rather toxic and sad person. No wonder I struggled with making friends so badly. Sometimes I’m not sure if I would go through my experiences in Okinawa again. I’m not sure if they made me the person I am today or if they kept me from being more advanced than I am. If I’m being honest with myself, it’s probably a combination of the two.
Reading my words from three years ago makes me realize how far I’ve come. How much more confident I am in who I am as a person and what my purpose in life is. How much better I’ve adjusted to this military base than the last. I have isolated myself to a certain extent but it no longer hurts me.
I feel like I have grown so much in the past few years and reading my words made me realize what a culminating practice becoming yourself is. It is so fascinating to me how I can be a different person this week than last week because of a struggle I have overcome or just something I have learned that has changed my perspective. Because my perspective on life, religion, education, marriage, politics, everything has changed over the last few years. I have truly grown into myself. And yet… if these last few years have been so formative for me, what will the next few be like? Will my writing feel naive and dated if I read it back in a few years? That is what scares me about blogging or even journaling. I feel like I’m always ashamed when I read it later.
Ashamed of the authentic feelings that lead me to write them out and perhaps share them on the internet.
But should I be ashamed of being a different person than I was when I wrote something years ago? It shows that I’m growing and learning and becoming more me every day and year.
This has probably been one of my most successful years in quite some time. I’m doing well in my classes and am getting closer and closer to being in the classroom. I’ve been killing my reading goal and learning to find different perspectives than my own. And I’ve managed to form a relatively healthy relationship with exercise and my body is improving (slowly).
And yet, I still find fault with myself. I still struggle with not being good enough or not improving quickly enough.
Maybe I should take some time to appreciate how far I’ve come and how much better my life has been in the past year. Sometimes it is so sad to me how much time I spent being unhappy in such a beautiful and wondrous environment. I’ll never know if I just wasn’t in the right place at the time or if the chaotic and crowded environment of Japan doesn’t meet my needs. I wish I had the ability to know which and yet, once again, I have to think it was a little bit of both.
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SIMPLY MEGAN
