Ten years ago if you would have asked me what my life would look like now I would have listed the following: I'd be married at 20, have a couple kids and be a stay at home mom, I'd be in a house, have a dog, I'd be a great friend, and have time to pursue all my hobbies and dreams. As I sat thinking about this a few nights ago all I could think was "OOPS!" You see, I AM married, later than I thought it would happen, but I'm married and happily at that! But, I don't stay at home, I work full time as a teacher. I don't have a house (in fact I live in a crappy apartment), or a dog and unfortunately I still don't have any kids. I rarely have time for my friends, even though I try to be a good one, and I have so many dream jobs with no time or money to go after them. If my 15 year-old self could see me now, she would probably freak out. I would probably have to scoop her jaw off the floor before she would say "What happened?!" And so lately I've been thinking.... what did happen?
Its moments like these that I start letting myself be sucked into moments of self doubt. My anxiety and depression rear their ugly head and I am left with nothing but the thoughts of "You are worthless, you can't do anything right, and you are failing at EVERYTHING." We all come to this point I think at some time in our lives. Social media doesn't help... I scroll through Facebook or Instagram and see another friend smiling in front their brand new house. I see another playing with their cute puppy, I see long lost friends who I haven't talked to in a decade and think about how I wish I knew what was happening in their life, and I see baby announcement after baby announcement. I let myself start to think "Why them? Why not me?". My brain starts to think "how am I so far behind all these people? How can they have a house, a job, a dog, AND a baby?! Is that really fair?! They must be so much more successful than me...." That's when I stopped. Success. What does that mean? Who measures success? Is there really a God watching over me saying "you fail at life, therefore you get NOTHING!" .... I don't think so. Then why do I feel so unsuccessful? It was then, only after weeks, months, years of moping about how my life didn't turn out the way that I planned that maybe, just maybe, it turned out better (or at least the way it needed to). And I began to think....
Well, I may not be a stay at home mom BUT I did graduate from college and successfully complete my first year of teaching.
I may not have a house, BUT I was able to get me and my husband through school without gaining too much student debt by saving money on rent.
I don't have a dog, BUT I have lots of really cute stuffed animals that require less clean up and don't try to run away from me.
I may not be able to pursue other dream jobs and hobbies, BUT I make one pretty great teacher and I worked extremely hard to go to school to do that.
And my biggest one: I don't have kids yet, BUT I am the best dang Aunt that I have ever met and I have the cutest nieces and nephews around.
"You see", I say to my imaginary 15 year old self. "Your life isn't so bad..."
And so, while I have hit road blocks, forks in my road, avalanches and every other oops there is, I still ended up being "successful", just not in the way that I imagined.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that just because someone else's life looks perfect, and more like what I want, I have the life I need. Yes, I still want to get a house, I still want a dog, I want to be a better friend, wife, sister, I want to have kids! But, I know that those things will happen when they are right for me. I deserve those things! I deserve to chase after dreams! I guess sometimes, we just have to put on the brakes for a second and enjoy the scenery.
So blog, I'm back. I'll write about my roadblocks with infertility, I'll share about my forks in the road of finding a new job, I'll share my avalanches of anxiety and depression my big OOPS moments, but I'll also share the beautiful scenery I find along the way. So, will you join my quest? The quest of constant perfection.
