she writes on sundays

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.

I want to post so many disclaimers on this blog. I want you to know that I am not tooting my own horn or think in any way shape or form I have it all together. I do want you to know that I am writing the following blog because I’ve realized in the midst of all the things that have felt hard lately, amidst all of the things that have felt hopeless or tiring or have caused me to want to pack up and flee Washington—I have come to realize something:

I am MORE than ok.

I believe for the first time in my life, with some bumps along the way, that I am living wholeheartedly.

“Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid but that doesn’t change the truth that I am worthy of love and belonging.” (Brene Brown)

I’ve had more times than I’d like to admit over the last year where I haven’t felt enough or worthy or wanted. More times that I’ve wanted to duck out or move or be alone (because good lord COMMUNITY).

Here’s the thing. I haven’t. Yes, once or twice I have ducked out because I needed a break from groups or couples or humans in general. But I used to go to sleep paralyzed with anxiety nightly second guessing everything I did or said. I used to wake up every morning with that same anxiety.

It doesn’t riddle my bones anymore.

There have been seasons where exhaustion and stress have allowed those things to creep in. But, I’ve realized over the past month that right now, in this time of my life, the only person I really have to be enough for is me.

And I think I am.

I was talking to my mom a couple weeks ago, reiterating a conversation I had with my friend Casey, about how it boggles my mind that people want to be my friend, or that I am someone people want around. I don’t say this to belittle myself in the least. I say it because I spent a lot of my life being quiet and shy and sitting alone. I never thought I was capable of making friends. Or that I was capable of being the outgoing one.

It’s not about being those things. It’s about being yourself. And for the first time in my life, I feel I am being myself. Not second guessing (98% of the time), choosing daily many things, not diminishing who I am in any sense. And that changes things.

Growing up we are told to be a good student, a good athlete, a good citizen, a good daughter. We are given parameters on what makes a good human.

But what about what makes a good you?

What if we all chose to, instead of living up to standards of enough-ness, chose to figure out who we were, piece by piece and be those things?

I don’t know all of who I am yet. But I do know a lot for 31.

I’m choosing to believe that I am enough for each day, even though some days I need to cry and battle that truth out with myself or with a sacred circle.

I’m choosing to go into each day and season with the thought that my enough for myself will change and grow.

But, I am also choosing to know it will only be defined by myself and lifted up with kind words from friends and maybe even sometimes tough love from those I trust.

I am choosing to go to bed every night knowing that I did the damn thing, and if I need to change something I will. Even if kids cry and transitions go to chaos and I feel as if I did nothing right, as long as I showed up and put my heart and mind into the day, I am enough and tomorrow is a new day.

I am choosing to live wholeheartedly, knowing that sometimes, it will need a margarita.

So here is my question to you–who are you being enough for?