The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

 This book.

I found myself absorbed into this book. I felt broken down by this book. Broken in the way that life-changing truths can break you. I believe in the power of books, words, ideas, and the way they come together in a story to change you.

And I think this one did. I can't get past the idea of life being full of regrets and choices, sadness and happiness, light and dark, and that will be true no matter what your life looks like. I can't get past the idea that the true beauty in living is seeing that you have to be appreciative of what you have in front of you.

This book made me want to believe in parallel universes. It made me want to believe in an infinite number of Megans out in the world living completely different lives than the one I sit in today.

The Megan who lived out her childhood dream of being a writer living in New York City. The Megan who still lives in her hometown and has two kids. The Megan who joined the Peace Corps and lives in a completely different world. The Megan who met a handsome foreigner and lives in a tiny cottage in the south of France. The Megan who stayed single and travels around the world with friends. The Megan who went to a big university and is under a mountain of debt now. The Megan that became a mother and loves it. The Megan that became a mother and hates it. The Megan who wrote a book. The Megan that became a college professor. The Megan that lives in a house with a group of female friends. The Megan who lives in a little house by the sea and paints and drinks tea. The Megan who never met Brandon and lives in her small town still. The Megan who moves to Greece and eats fresh yoghurt and honey every morning. The Megan who teaches English in Paris and picks up a baguette on her way home from work. The Megan who lives in a tiny village and rides her pink basketed bicycle to work every morning. The Megan who lives in Seattle and writes for a newspaper. The Megan who jumps out of planes and has no fear. The Megan who married a woman. The Megan who adopted four kids and revels in it. The Megan who opened a school for girls and spends her days inspiring young girls to be anyone they want. The possibility of all those Megans out in the world feels so fulfilling and empowering. 

I have this mental picture in my head of all these Megans out living their lives, still feeling sad, happy, confused, and unsure of herself because those experiences are essential to being human. I can see myself standing in the center of a whirlwind of echoes from those parallel lives. Unable to fully see them and yet feeling how different and wonderful all their lives are. 

Just like how different and wonderful this life I sit in now is. 

It isn't often that a book comes into your life and changes your perspective. Changes how you see yourself and the world around you. A book that comes into your life and makes you more grateful, humbled, and compassionate about the hardships of being human. That we're all experiencing joy, sadness, confusion, and regret for the choices we think ruined our lives. That the only flaws in our lives are being unwilling to look past the regret to see everything we should be thankful for.

Thank you, Matt Haig, for writing a book that completely changed my perspective, came at a timely moment in my life where thoughts and conversations around choices and regret were commonplace and creating this new space where I can imagine all the lives I could have lived. And perhaps, am living. Thank you.

No, Thank God

 Today I said "No, thank god," when asked if I had kids. I didn't even think about it. It just popped out of my mouth.

A week after a long session with my therapist talking about if I want kids or not. 

Talking in circles about life choices and regret. 

I still don't know how I feel about becoming a mother. 

And today as I was washing my face and thinking about all the ways I've grown and learned this year and all the years before, I thought, 

"I'm so glad I'm not a mom right now."

And that was it. 

That's how I feel right now. 

That doesn't mean the feeling won't change. But I'm still growing into myself. I'm still learning new things. I'm still experimenting. I'm not ready to give all that up to be a Mom, but I also need to get over my desire to lockdown an answer. 

Life is ambiguous. 

I'm trying to put this decision up on a shelf and out of my head for a few years. I'm not ready yet. Maybe I'll never be ready. Maybe it's okay to not know and just keep living my life. 

In my very early twenties, I posted something about your twenties being your selfish years. I'm so thankful for these years of growth and development for myself. Only in a world in which we villanize a woman who chooses herself over the "selflessness" of motherhood would call those years selfish. 

I can't imagine giving up how much I've changed in order to be a mother. Maybe the woman I'll be in ten years will feel the exact same way. Maybe she will be so thankful and amazed at the extra ten years of growth and development she got all because I decided not to become a mother at this point in time. When I wasn't ready.

Saying not now isn't saying not ever. I don't have the same peace of mind or clarity about motherhood as most other women around me, whether for or against. 

I have a vague sense of maybeness that is quilted in not now, not yet, I'm not done figuring out me yet.

I went to Therapy

 I'd been thinking about it for a while.

All the small issues that had been piling up over the years, all the little things that seemed to circulate in my head over and over again, and the beliefs and issues that hadn't worked themselves out.

I'm fine, I told myself, constantly. This is fine. Your life is good. Be thankful for your life. 

And I am thankful for my life. And I am also unhappy with many aspects of it. It was time to reach out. So I finally found someone that I thought might work for me. I emailed, set up an appointment, signed a counseling agreement, and then spent a week talking myself out of and back into going.

How dare you complain about your life? Who are you to take the time to complain about your privileged issues? Those questions plagued me all week. But I decided to just suck it up and go. The fact that I made the appointment was a good enough sign that I needed it.

I had never been in therapy before. I had never sat and talked about intimate details of my life and how I feel about it with a stranger. Those thoughts were regulated to my husband and best friend. I didn't think I would be able to open up about my struggles.

But then after some small chit chat, she just stared at me. Waiting for me to open up. So I did. I opened up so much more than I thought I would. 

I cried. Of course. Can I get through tough conversations without crying? Throughout my entire session, my voice was in that whiny snivelly state it gets in when you're on the edge of crying. I had a tissue in my hand that dabbed at my eyes every few minutes. I talked with my hands. 

It felt a bit like a weight had been lifted off of me and at the same time, I felt drained and emotional. 

Life in the military community has been incredibly hard on me. It's hit my self-esteem, my desire for control and stability, and my ability to form deep attachments. It has really done a number on me. And year after year, I just keep telling myself that it will get better. And it does, but not because the situation is better, but because I become more resilient. 

Something she said that stuck with me was, 

"Are  you really okay, or are you just really good at coping?"

Am I okay, or am I just really good at coping? Am I okay, or am I just really good at coping?

I think I've come to the point where I've just managed to push down and ignore so many of my own issues that I'm coping at a surface level. I'm just coping. And I want to be truly okay.

The Vanishing Half

Who would have thought that after all of my book club drama earlier in the year, I would find myself in the perfect book club of two? All of our book choices have been so interesting, gripping, and great for discussion, and it has given me the opportunity to grow a friendship with someone that I might not have if we had continued as a larger group. I can't recommend doing partner reads instead of book clubs more. The conversations are more intimate, the book choices better, and there is so much less stress about scheduling, choosing books, handling opinions, and waiting for everyone to respond. It just gets to be a conversation about books between friends.

And I love that.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is a book that made me want to stay up all night just to finish it. I haven't experienced that in a novel in a long time. It ignited my passion for reading again. That's not to say I haven't read good books this year, but this one pulled me in and I didn't want it to stop. 

The premise is simple: two twin girls who are Black but white-passing grow up and choose completely different lives. One marries the darkest man she can find while the other marries a white man, abandons her family, and reinvents herself. Their stories twisting through the stories of their daughters until it all comes together. 

So much of this novel focuses on race, identity, racism, colorism, the choices we make, the roles we choose to perform, and how they impact others. 

I loved how this novel explores how we create our own identity, and even though there might be consequences to that choice, they aren't always as dramatic or as dire as some fictional stories make them out to be.

This story felt so realistic in the way Stella's choice impacted herself and her daughter. They both had to reckon with their identity and it created a wedge between them because of the lies, but in the end, there were no real consequences. Stella remained married to her husband, a professor, living out her life as white. She found her way back to her mother, sister, and hometown, but she still chose the life she created in the end. The author could have villanized Stella. She chose being white, she chose to use racism to protect herself, and she chose to lie to her husband, daughter, and friends. The author could have chosen to create consequences for Stella where she is found out, a fraud, and abandoned and alone. But sometimes the choices we make are hard to live with but don't end with dramatic consequences, or even learning this huge moral lesson. Stella made her way back to her family, but she still chose herself and the identity she created over them. Stella could have been a character that Bennett made us hate. She could have been used as a foil for Desiree, showing how being inauthentic and lying causes disastrous consequences. But she wasn't. She lived the privileged if ultimately, less happy life. But even with all the horrible choices, Stella makes to protect herself, we, the reader, can still empathize with her. We can understand why she chose to become something else in order to live a better life. We can also empathize with Desiree's desire to shed the shadow of colorism that she had grown up with to create a new life. We can see how one life experience can impact people in two completely different ways, even when it seems like they are two sides of the same coin. 

This story felt so realistic in the way Stella's and Desiree's choices impacted themselves and their daughters. They all had to reckon with the choices their mothers made, the lies that were told, and their identities because of those choices. Desiree's desire to shed the shadow of colorism that she had grown up with and marry the darkest man she could find, impacted her daughter's life when she brought her back to that town that is so focused on lightness. Stella's desire to live a life of ease that led to her lies created a wedge between herself and her daughter. We can empathize with both twins, even though it would have been easy for the author to villanize Stella. Ultimately, both of their choices had consequences but none of them were dire or dramatic. Sometimes the choices we make are hard to live with but they don't end with lives being ruined. It felt so poignant that all of these women continued down their own path, living with their choices, and forging their own roles and identity from the choices the generation before them made. 

This was such an interesting and gripping novel and I can't recommend it enough. 

Motherhood or Otherhood

I've spent the last five years dodging questions about babies or telling people outright that I don't want motherhood, to please stop harassing me about choosing that life. That I absolutely 100% do not want to be a mother.

I even wrote a post on this blog about being childfree by choice. I pointed out the many talking points about not asking women about having children. Which are all true. You shouldn't ask questions about motherhood unprompted. It's rude and presumptuous.

I tell people I don't want to have children because it makes it easier. It makes it easier to just let them think that the decision has been made so that they leave me alone about it. So that I don't get this external pressure from family (or less of it) and I can figure out what I want on my own. 

But, honestly, not having external pressure hasn't helped. I am still so confused about choosing motherhood. 

I sit directly on the fence between motherhood and otherhood, seeing the realities of both choices.

A choice that can't be taken back once chosen. This decision creates a fork in your life like no other. You have to choose one.

I have these conversations with friends but most of them have adamantly and whole-heartedly chosen to be childfree. They don't feel the conflict that I feel. Does that mean that I want to have a baby if I can't one hundred percent commit to being childfree? If I'm afraid of regrets or if I sometimes feel pulled that way...

I see the childfree life with my husband. Money, travels, free time, less fighting, less hard decisions, less worrying, our dream home... I see a very full life that I think I could be happy with. I'm mostly happy with my childfree life now... Why can't that continue?

But then I see a parent with their child and I see the joy, the love, the experience of nurturing someone into their best self. I think of the bonding experience of creating a little person with the person you love. I think about the relationship that I will have with my child that will be unlike my relationship with anyone else. I also see the guilt, the messy houses, the worry, fear, financial strain, sleepless nights, having to choose someone else over yourself constantly.

I'm at that age where I'm standing at that fork in my life. I'm paralyzed by fear and indecision. What if I make the wrong decision? What if I'm hopelessly unhappy once I've made it?

All the women in my family were mothers by the time they were my age. Most of them much earlier.

I don't have a grown role model who chose a childfree life. Who lived their life on their terms and didn't regret it. 

I try to give myself little scenario exercises to see how I feel.

I recently had a bit of a scare and when I saw that negative test, I felt just as relieved as I was sad.

How can that be? How can I feel equally sad and relieved? 

I ask myself if I would go through infertility treatments if I couldn't conceive naturally... I don't think I would. Does that mean that I don't really want motherhood?

I ask myself if I would leave my husband if I wanted one and he didn't and neither of us was willing to budge. I don't think I would. Does that mean that I don't really want motherhood?

Sometimes I think about just leaving it to chance. If it happens, then it happens and if it doesn't, it doesn't. But I hate not making an intentional decision about such a big life-altering choice. I know a lot of people have children this way. I just don't think it's what I want.

I am still sitting on this fence, looking both ways, and feeling the weight of both choices, with no clue as to what I actually want. 

I think there will be regrets either way. I think if I choose childfree then I'll always think of the child that could have been. I think that if I choose motherhood then I will always think of the ease and joys of my life before becoming a mother.

I guess the question really is, which choice will I regret more?

August

It's August.

Today, I looked at the date realized we were already several days into August. 

August. The month I decided I would give up on finding a teaching position for this school year and apply to grad school.

That was my deadline. School is supposed to start in a few weeks and I haven't had an interview since May. 

I know things are different because of the pandemic and so many school districts have no idea what they are doing or what school is going to look like this year.

I know many teachers on social media have discussed quitting and not coming back for this school year because they don't feel safe and heard in the back-to-school plans.

Some would love to be able to financially afford not to go back. Some would be envious of my position.

And yet, I'm envious of theirs. I'm envious of their bitmoji classrooms and virtual learning plans. I'm even envious of the ones who are going back in person with all of the fear and masks and ridiculous plans. I know I would be stressed if it were me but it seems better than spending another year not being able to do what I love.

Last year it was because the military left me to rot in Missouri all Summer and I thought, next year I'll be setting my classroom up, I'll be greeting my students, planning lessons, and sharing my love of learning with a wonderful group of kids.

But here is next year. And I am not doing any of those things. I am left wondering if I will ever be able to do this thing I love. It seems so simple. And yet I can't do it. 

I'm glad for the opportunity to go to grad school. I have realized that I would like to work with older kids and I'm going to transition to secondary school through my Master's. 

But that doesn't mean that I don't want the experience of my own classroom this year. I want it desperately. It fucks with my self-esteem that I can't get a job in my field.

I know that this is the reality for a lot of Americans right now. I know that the pandemic hasn't just affected education. I know that I am lucky to have the chance to go back to school and to be financially secure. 

But I've been putting off applying and starting. I keep hoping that they're waiting until the last minute to hire teachers. I keep thinking that if I put off grad school then by some miracle, I'll have a job. I can't keep putting it off for long. I have to use this time off productively. I have to improve and do something with my life. I'm excited about going back to school and learning.

I just wish it didn't come with this cost of not getting to teach. 

Empowered Girls

I did a thing.

I did a thing built out of boredom, creativity, love, passion, and deep knowledge that young girls aren't getting the tools they need to become the empowered women who will change the world. 

I've seen first hand how girls are told to be quiet, nice, and to know that they are expected to behave better than the boys from an early age.

I wanted girls to know themselves. To know that it is okay to love themselves, to love and accept their bodies, and to care for themselves so that they can be their best. I wanted them to understand their emotions, negative thought patterns, and how to acknowledge and accept that they are a part of life that has to be dealt with. I wanted them to know that it's okay to reach higher. To change the things you cannot accept and do better. I wanted them to know how to build healthy friendships and relationships from a young age so that they don't have to learn how to do it in their twenties like so many of us. I wanted them to know that it was okay to show up uniquely and wonderfully as themselves in this world. I wanted to empower girls to live their lives intentionally and empathetically. I wanted to remind them of all that they are and all that they can be. 

And I also needed to remind myself. I needed to remind myself that it's okay to be who I really am. That I can acknowledge and accept my emotions but not unpack there in self-pity. That I can outgrow things and strive for better. That I deserve people who love and respect me for me. I needed these lessons just as much as the girls that I wrote this for. 

There is this quote that sat with me as I wrote and created this journal. "Be the person you needed when  you were younger." So that's what I did. I created this journal because it's what I needed when I was younger. I needed someone to sit me down and tell me that it was okay that I was sensitive, that I saw the world differently than others, and that my body was fine just the way it was. I needed all these reminders. 

So here is my creation that started it all. It started a creative fury of journal making, a small business that I'm still trying to get off the ground, and a hope that I can help make the future better for a few young girls. 

When you empower girls, you empower the world.

Shop paperback journal here on Amazon and printable journal here on Etsy.