Tough, but good

Where I am in my life right now is someplace really, really good. I am in a place -- financially, emotionally, physically -- that I never knew I would have the privilege or right to experience, and I am grateful every single day to have made it as far as I have. It took a lot of work, and it took a lot of convincing myself that what I've done to get here is a big accomplishment. It's difficult to see it that way at times when I have this tendency to compare myself to others around me. But that's not fair. It's not about how I measure up to others, but how I measure up to who I was before. I am, and will continue to be, a work in progress, and that's okay. I have to remember that.

The good, and bad, thing about being in such a good place right now is that my brain decided, "Oh, okay, you're safe and happy right now, so this would be the perfect time to go through all those boxes up here you shoved aside when you had other shit to deal with." Cool. You know that quote by John F. Kennedy? "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." Well, the sun is shining, and I'm out on the roof.

Essentially, I spent a lot of my time growing up living in what I consider "survival mode." I got through each day, sometimes by hanging on by the tips of my fingers. I fought just to get through my weeks. So when something bad came up -- something that threatened to pry those fingers off the ledge -- I would push it aside to deal with later. I had to recover from this problem/threat first, and then I could handle that one.  I repressed, sometimes in the moment, so I could survive. But because I was always in this instinct of protect, survive, move on, I ended up collecting a lot of these problems, cluttering the back of my mind. When you're always in survival mode, there's no time to deal with anything but surviving. There's no time to deal with problem number two (or three, or four, or five...).

The Void, I've called it before. I put the problems in boxes and shoved them deep, deep down. And now they're resurfacing. Which is tough, but good. Tough to deal with -- but a good sign, because it means I'm safe. It means my brain thinks I'm capable of opening everything up now. One box at a time.

But it's hard, when there are so many boxes that I don't know where to begin. Or I don't always remember what's in those boxes. And that part scares me most of all, I think. I'm not sure how many boxes of trauma I've stowed away, and I have no idea what's going to happen when I open them up. What will I find?

One of those boxes sprung open this morning. I had the same nightmare, three or four times in a row. But it didn't feel the same as a regular nightmare. It was vivid in the same way that my nightmares tied to memories are. And it was exactly the same, each time it played out. I woke up in a panic, realizing this was not just a bad dream, but rather something from my past I was remembering. The details at the end of the scene I had to watch on repeat this morning are a little fuzzy still, but my brain is slowly trying to untangle it for me, in a way that I will be able to manage. Again: tough, but good.

I will take it one memory at a time. It's nice that I have someone who is always there to remind me that no matter what I find, no matter what I remember, I am in a better place now. I am safe, I am happy, I am so much stronger. This past Saturday I got my fourth tattoo to remind me of this. It's a little sprig of lavender blooms. It reminds me of growth, of fragility. Of grace, silence, and calm hope. I will carry it with me, always.

Fear no fate

I have three tattoos, and depending on the weather, at least two are predominantly visible.

My first was a set of delicate quotation marks on my wrists, right over my pulse points. I was twenty. I lived in a world of fiction. Books -- writing them, reading -- got me through a lot of tough years. I wanted to keep that peace with me and be able to look at it every day and find it again.

Last May I got my latest tattoo. I was twenty-three, my sister was twenty-one. On the back of her left heel, she got the sun and I got the moon on my own right heel. I remember not being nervous, and I remember how brilliantly teal the walls of the tattoo parlor were with the early summer sun glaring through the windows. My sister means the world to me, and even more than books ever were or could be, she is my happy and bright, no matter how dark the nights.

But my favorite tattoo was my second. I was twenty-one, almost twenty-two. The days leading up to it were spent deciding where I wanted the tattoo placed, how big I wanted the lettering, which script was right. It was my sister's first tattoo (a quote from Rent across her back, in typewriter lettering). I wore my Ramones shirt. I had a panic attack on the drive there, making the tattoo all the more appropriate afterward.

Photo by Sarah Culver Photography

"fear no fate"

I decided I wanted the small quote to sit just under my left collarbone, a few inches above my heart. I wanted it visible; I wanted to see it every time I looked in the mirror.

Usually, the tops I wear cover at least part of the tattoo. (I noticed once, at work, that only the word "fear" was visible. It made me laugh, and then think about the importance of the two words that followed.) So, naturally, because it is a tattoo that is partially visible -- as in, visible enough to see I have a tattoo, but maybe not clear enough to make out what it is -- I get a lot of questions about it.

"Fear no fate." It's a line I cut out of my favorite E.E. Cummings poem, [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]. It sits at the top of the second stanza, and in full, the sentiment reads: 

  i fear / no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)

Work is third

The other week, my sister and I got complimenting tattoos. I got the moon and she got the sun. There's a lovely quote I read once that I was drawn to right before we went under the needle: "You and I share the same sky; that's how I sleep at night." They're still healing, so we're staying out of the pool and sun for a little longer -- meaning we are both as pale as ever -- but I am obsessed with them. I love having another thing that ties me and my sister together. As if we didn't have enough evidence that we're super close.

Work (as a tangential update) is still crazy. Most of my week is spent working -- and it's crazy and hectic and exhausting but I love it. Really and truly, I love it. The people I work with are the kindest and most fun people I could ever hope to be surrounded by! Every day, even the hard ones, I look around and think about how lucky I am to be where I am, with the people I am with. But honestly, work is taking up a good amount of my time. As I was getting used to this new schedule of mine, I realized I had started to let some things slip. I was forgetting to spend as much time with family and friends, because the time I had off I wanted to relax and do nothing. Which I still do (I'm doing it today); I do get a certain pleasure of telling people I did absolutely nothing at all with my day off. But I was letting other things I love slip.

Reading, for one. Writing, for another. I hadn't finished a book in way too long, so this week I opened one that had been sitting on my shelf for about a month and finally started reading it. Now I have about fifty pages of this 640-paged book left.

And the whole "remembering to actually talk to people who you don't only work with" thing is getting better. I'm working on saving up some of my energy to spend on friends and family, because I miss seeing them as much as I used to. And no matter how much I love work, I don't want that to be the only thing in my life. I need to remember that and make a conscious effort to say yes to spending time with people, even when I'm very tired and would much rather say no, I'm going to go nap. I won't remember that nap or how tired I am in fifty years; chances are I'll remember spending time with my friends.

In the wise words of Leslie Knope...

“We need to remember what's important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn't matter, but work is third.”