she writes on sundays

I bought a new journal about a month ago or so. I didn’t need a new journal, I am nowhere close to finish my current journal. And it has lines.😳

It’s this beautiful tiny journal with a silly story on the front and the back. But as I held it, I knew that lines or not, with even its small amount of pages, it was a journal for me to tell a story in. I could feel it.

It’s still blank. I haven’t written a single word.

I carried it to California this past weekend in hopes that I might pause, that I might unearth a lesson long buried there.

Sunday was a weird day.
I went to church, and then went to the place I used to work to meet up with a lovely family I haven’t seen in a year and a half.

And a heaviness followed me.

When I set foot through the gate I walked through hundreds and hundreds of times the heaviness met me. And as I sat on the benches and looked around the courtyard, I couldn’t shake the feeling.

I got hugs from my Grandma Winnie and went out to lunch with Eric and Cathy and their boys and I had very few words it seems for this year that has put me under.

And I couldn’t verbalized it. For all the words I’ve written and conversations I’ve had and tears I’ve cried, my brain didn’t want to connect.
It was the walk through the neighborhood I used to call home that caused me to realize something, the walk home caused a song lyric to start playing through my brain.

I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

Leaving Orange County four years ago was the hardest/best decision I have ever made.

That decision spawned another and another and another.

And now I’m in Bellingham.

I’m 31. I’ve essentially worked in the same “industry” for over ten years. I have a full (expired) passport. I have amazing friends here and there and everywhere in between. I have a beautiful unique faith that I build upon daily and I have a pretty good grasp on the person that is Meghan Marie Reeve.

I do my best to show up for my life daily, through joy and laughter and sorrow and tears.

And I still don’t necessarily know what I am looking for.

I’ve found a lot of things in my life so far, and I think I’m up for some more.

We get told to settle a lot. To give up. To stop hoping. To marrying that guy, to stay in the job.

We get told a lot to not jump. To squash the desire for more.

It’s ok to keep looking for more as long as you don’t give up life around you. It’s ok to not have found what your looking for as long as you continually live fully in the present.

Walking down the streets I walked down more times than I can count attempting to shake of the heaviness that was settling, I realized that I am ok with not having found what I am looking for.

16 years ago I found something and chose to follow Christ.

14 years ago I found something and chose to go to Vanguard.

9 years ago I found it and chose to stay.

4 years ago I found it and chose to leave.

And twice since then I’ve chosen to go.

And now here I am. Living my life as fully as I can.

I don’t know what I will find next. I’m growing accustom to the feeling of more.

Please please please, don’t be afraid, as you fully live your life, to let the feeling of more allow you to reach farther than you have, to do more then you thought you could. Be who you are, where you are and there I believe we will once again find something to add to our trove of lessons, victories, and memories. We will find and create stories to nestle in tiny journals and tell our kids.

As I got to the end of this compilation of sentences, a friend of mine popped in my brain.

My favorite Casey Marie.

Casey is one of those humans from my small town that I couldn’t tell you how long I’ve known. It seems like she’s always been in my life.

Casey, this blog and these words are for you. You are a dynamic spitfire, who has come and gone. You’ve won over crowds with your ability to bring them to tears or have them in stitches. You’ve found so many trinkets and unicorns in your life. And you are on the cusp of another.

2017 is for you.

(It’s for you too. And even if you’ve found a long list of things in your life, even if you’re 90. You can still find more of what you are looking for.)

I currently am living too brain dead and exhausted to do much of anything these days. My compassion and patience and words for the day are pretty much done by 3 pm each week day. I just want to hide in a hole in my room and not come out.

I don’t want to be around a single person ever. 

I spent a majority of my Saturday, in my room, with the door shut. I didn’t attempt to make conversation with people. I said no to plans. I didn’t even check the mail.
And I didn’t feel better.

I woke up this morning before my alarm and my roommate was up, so we decided to go sit at a coffee shop before we went to church.

We didn’t talk about anything earth shaking. Just sat in each other’s space for longer then 15 minutes and doodle and occasionally spoke about random things. And it made everything feel lighter and brighter.

When I took the Meyers Briggs before I went on the world race 4 years ago I tested as an ENFJ. An extrovert.

I laughed. I prefaced every conversation about my Meyers Briggs with “I have literally never tested as an extrovert. Ever.”

I thought this was the most comical thing that I had ever heard. There is no way that I was an extrovert. I was your poster child for introverts.

But, I’ve come to learn that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t that I was introvert. It was that I taught myself not need/depend on/want people in my life. I had spoken myself into introversion. 

Somewhere along the line I had deemed myself a person who got their energy from being alone.

But, in reality, I had just decided that if I needed energy from being around people and none were around or wanted to be around me then I had the ability to get hurt.

I had gotten kind of sick of getting hurt.

Now, I don’t believe that you need a test to tell you who you are, but I do believe that words have power. And when this test told me, that I was an extrovert, I started to see ways that I was.

I love being around small groups of humans, I love coffee dates with friends, or running errands with someone. I like just being around people. My Saturday day of introversion usually includes wandering around downtown and seeing all the regular folks. I’m alone, but I’m not alone.

I do enjoy my alone time, I like cleaning in an empty house, or sitting at a coffee shop by myself to write. 

But I do better at the end of a long day, if I grab a beer with Elizabeth or meet Jonathan at Bob’s or Alyssa at woods. Friday’s feel better when we get drinks and food and toast to a week finished together. Sundays feel more full when Jeremiah, Patty and I go out for brunch or Joanna and I eat truffle fries and Patrick pops out on his break to steal some. 

The yellow house feels like it’s living up to it’s potential when even after a horrendously long day we cram 12 people into our front room for chimichangas and cards against humanity. 

And even though I joke that I want to stay at a hotel when I go to Orange County, I go there to go home–and that’s Tyler and Priscilla’s (and obviously with Krystle spending the night.)

If I truly believed I didn’t need people, I wouldn’t have made 3/4 of the decisions I’ve made in my life.

Something in me knew.

I think I spent a lot of my life, hiding from getting hurt, hiding from people.

Hiding from myself. 

I used being an introvert as an excuse to not be around people to not see myself.

If you are a person who is fact an introvert or a small group extrovert (this is my category) please remember, that you do in fact need people. 

We aren’t meant to do this alone. 

This is what I need to remember these days. 

I’m not meant to do this alone.

And I’m not.

Lesson one was you were meant to take up space.

And lesson two is this:

Trust me, you aren’t alone.  

Your people are out there.

And they need you as much as you need them.

All I’ve wanted to tell people over the past month is to grow the eff up, put on your big girl panties and  show up for your life. It’s a fire that was lit in me by one of the fathers in my life. Commit or be killed. Man up or shut up. Be a grown ass woman and do the damn thing.
But as the words started to come out, my BS monitored started to ding.

I haven’t been listening to my own war cries. 

It’s easy for me to call out the tangible examples of people not showing up. A parent forgetting to pick you up from soccer practice. A friend missing a coffee date.  An online date who chose to up and leave halfway through a drink (yes, that was a thing). 

How would this make you feel?

How did these things make me feel?

Like I didn’t matter. Like my time wasn’t as valuable. That I wasn’t worth it.

Or in the very real situation of a date leaving before they finished a drink–that I wasn’t acceptable. 

The tangible showing up is easy to see. And easy to call out. I have many a speech prepared were I to run into a few certain human beings.

But what about the not showing up that isn’t tangible.

Me and Washington aren’t the best of friends. I haven’t been shy to say this. I haven’t been shy to state that this has been the hardest staying season I’ve ever set foot in. But just because I say it doesn’t mean I’m necessarily working that hard to change.
I know I’m here, I know I am not leaving. Making friends, connections, working full time, making a name for myself in the wacky arena I find myself in, I signed another lease.

But diving in, is another story. 
I haven’t been showing up with my everything. I don’t let people in past a certain fence. I am not allowing strong bridges to be built.

Blunt honesty moment: I am scared of getting hurt, getting left behind, getting pushed to the side.

There is this one moment, etched in my mind, from when I was in fifth grade. I had walked to school by myself and went to go find “my friends” on the playground. Come to find out they were all hiding from me.

I think it was then that I realized needing people, friends, humans in my life was a weakness. A place I could get hurt. So even if I showed up, I had a defense. I had an ability to quarantine my heart off.

But just as physically choosing to not show up to work, or to ditch a friend is painful and effects those around you; choosing to not show up with your whole self for the people around you effects them  and is an action that tells people that you don’t trust them. 

Let me rephrase that: when I don’t show up for those I love, when I choose not to be here, I’m telling them I don’t trust them.

I know that I am too hard on myself, that I show up more often than not.
But I also know that there are fork in the road moments where I can chose to be there in the moment, or not be there at all and somewhere in this last year, it’s been easier to not be there at all. 

I realized this morning that somewhere in the past month I stopped caring. I stopped letting the hard things hit me, the tired things make me tired, because it became too much. I ran out of emotions for 2016.

I stopped showing up because it became easier to avoid the reminders that I was lacking something then to have it hit me in the face daily.

I think that somewhere in this year I got sick of being hurt by things that weren’t even set out to hurt me. 

I feel as if I am full of apologies to my friends, to the people around me whom I’ve maybe caused to feel worthless, useless or unloved.

I’m full of anger at myself for letting it get to this point.

But, I’m also filled with hope for myself. That in the midst, I am still here. 

I’m choosing these days to not let my offenses with myself pile up. I’m choosing not to beat myself up over how horrible a job I’ve done, or when I am unable to get kids to sleep.

That’s my slow way of journeying into showing up. Reflecting. Taking what I need, and moving on.

Choosing to know that when I show up for these humans, they will be there for me.

And knowing that they haven’t given up on me yet.

So, if you need a speech on showing up, I am fully prepared to give it, but in this journey of living wholehearted, this area is a work in progress. I’m ok with that. And I’m thankful for those around me allow it.