A Call Every September

As a little note: I actually wrote this in September of 2020 and came across it almost exactly a year later. Upon rereading it, I found it was still very relevant to today (sad face). Thanks for reading!

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Today, someone told me about a friend of theirs who passed away last week. They didn’t often communicate, but were the type of friends that could pick up right where they left off. They touched base every September, bonding over the return of fall sports and a new season. He found out his friend died from his obituary in the paper, coming to the sorrowful realization that they wouldn’t have their September call. 2019 had been their very last talk, unbeknownst to either party. I find this...profoundly sad. Perhaps it’s because we have all been touched by death recently and perhaps because it was easier to let myself feel someone else’s sadness rather than my own. I, too, have been touched by death recently and it has opened my eyes to the way we process grief. Rather, it’s opened my eyes and my heart to the way we brush past death, the way we take so much for granted, and the way we avoid the entirety of the grieving process. 

I took a beach trip last week. It was much, much needed. I am still so tired. I mean that in every single sense of the word, and I feel most of you can relate to that given the circumstances in which we’re living. From what I’ve gathered, we’re all basically in a place of turmoil. So, I took an appropriately socially-distanced vacation to the Outer Banks (one of my favorite pictures from several years ago is above), a place that holds a special place in my heart, but has a very specific connection to death and grieving for me. I spent several months in 2016 living in a little Corolla beach house with Linda Taylor, a long-time family friend. Linda’s life story is one that I would be honored to tell and one that certainly deserves telling, which I hope to do one day. For now, it’s important that you know Linda was a force to be reckoned with. She was a fierce, brave, and independent soul that spent her life living on her own terms. Almost exactly a year ago, Linda lost her life to lung cancer and though I don’t like the whole “lost the battle to cancer” narrative, I can personally attest that Linda fought long and hard, and she was proud of fighting so fervently. Linda opened her home to me to be her roomie for a long summer, from May to August, and we had the time of our lives. She taught me her famous brownie recipe, gave me my first taste of Prosecco (with raspberries in the bottom of the glass, of course), and slowly but surely told me her life story. Linda persevered through every scenario imaginable: bad relationships, financial troubles, family strife, and a rocky, though ultimately successful, career path. Her life is one that so beautifully illustrates the human spirit and just now strong people can be. It was the very best summer and that little slice of salt and sand will always be special to me. Visiting the area so close to the first anniversary of her death stirred up many emotions for me, the first of which being that I never grieved her death because things were too crazy for me at the time. 

When I came home from my much-needed vacation, I got a message from my dad that another family member had passed. He waited to tell my sister and I so we could enjoy our vacation, as her service isn’t until the end of this week. Her name was Ann and she wasn’t actually related to us by blood, but she was closer to us than many of our own family members. Ann never married and never had a family of her own, so she was adopted into ours. She came to our Sunday night family dinners for our entire childhood. She loved us and our family endlessly, which was absolutely reciprocated. Ann faced trials and tribulations her entire life, telling heartbreaking stories of poverty and hardship that made her a strong, independent woman. Ann and Linda remind me a lot of each other, though they were polar opposites. Ann was a very proud Christian and was as sweet as sugar. Linda was boisterous and unapologetically blunt, her favorite insult was to call someone a “Twithead” and it was usually followed by a string of curse words. Both women were strong-willed, independent, and unconstrained by the traditional gender roles they never cared to fit into. I am eternally honored to have known them both and the emptiness left in their absence is palpable. Finally, another impossibly strong woman the world has lost is the amazing Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I don’t have to write about her life and accomplishments, there are biographers who can write her story far more eloquently than I. The world is grieving together and so many people feel profoundly sad, rightfully so. 

At the risk of sounding like the socialist that I am, I think much of our avoidance when it comes to grieving is surrounded in capitalism and emotions being devalued and taboo. If something really tragic happens, you’re lucky to get a week of bereavement leave at a really, really good job. My job certainly doesn’t have a policy as liberal as that, and many people are left without leave at all. Many work through tears, continuing to run themselves ragged when they need both physical and mental rest. Some of us will be lucky to run across compassionate managers who will bend the rules and allow us some wiggle room, but more often than not, that grace is not given. It leaves one wondering, how do we fix it? Well, like many issues that cross from one’s personal life to the professional/political world, true change won’t come without a complete overhaul of our system as we know it. Maybe one day when we start valuing humans over money, things like this will change. The personal and professional burnout that I’ve felt recently prevents me from gaining much hope, and I’m not sure we’ll see that type of positive change in our lives. 

In the meantime, we have to give ourselves and others the grace and compassion we wish the world would give us. Small changes are impactful and during a time of grief for so many, we must address this. I know I’ve written about grief before and truthfully, the words I put on a blog that 5 people read probably don’t matter that much, but it’s on my heart to say it anyway. We owe it to those we’ve lost to face these emotions and stop the decades-long cycle of holding in our grief and sadness. Practice true forms of self-care, not just the hot bath, glass of wine kind. Exercise occasionally, feed yourself, and talk to someone about what you’re experiencing. We’re all living through trauma right now and we have all been touched by death, many of us fairly recently. 

When we lose people we love, we miss so many parts of them. I miss the way Ann would call herself the Queen of Uno even if she lost 5 games in a row. I miss the texts Linda would send me to come upstairs and watch Say Yes to the Dress. We miss what they were, not realizing that we hold a lot of that in our own lives. I truly believe the spirits of our lost loved ones will live on in us forever, and thank goodness for that. Honor their spirits by truly feeling your feelings of grief, allow yourself to be sad and scream and cry, if that’s what you need. And whatever the “September Call” is to you, whether it’s a call, a Facebook message, or an annual event, make sure you do it before next September. It’s worth it.

It's Been Awhile

Hey there, one of 3 people who read this! It's been a minute. This feels a little like "What Did I Miss?" from Hamilton except I've been at home for 18 months instead of in France. A lot has changed since the last time I published one of these posts. I haven't stopped writing, but I have changed things a bit nonetheless. I have worked up the courage to submit my pieces on a more regular basis to literary magazines and contests. I write some pretty great Instagram captions, if I do say so myself. However, I think it's time I revive this blog and share more thoughts into the internet abyss.

My last published post was about finishing my graduate program, and I feel like I've lived a thousand lifetimes since. We're still up to our eyeballs in Covid-19, though now we have a vaccine that has saved presumably thousands of lives. There are folks who still refuse the vaccine, but I'm not getting into that mess right now. Our lives have all changed in ways we couldn't have imagined before entering a pandemic. Many of us still haven't seen friends and family members for a long, long time. We have faced an unimaginable amount of grief as we learn of the loss of yet another member of our community. It's heartbreaking and all around traumatizing. However, that's not why I'm writing this post. 

If you'll remember, when I first started this blog, the name "99 Days" came to me because I revisited a video journal entry I made that just so happened to be recorded 99 days prior. 99 days became a theme for me, a way I began to think about stretches of time. 99 days ago today was June 6, 2021 and 99 days from now will be December 21, 2021. Neither of those hold any specific significance, so there goes about half the content I was planning for this. 99 days ago, we were nearing the end of a historical school year and ready for a break. In 99 days, we'll be gearing up for Christmas, wrapping last minute presents and picking up forgotten Christmas dinner ingredients at the grocery store. 

Instead of focusing on the last 99 days, I'll update my 3 readers on what's been happening since my last post. In late 2020, I got engaged to my very favorite person in the world. It was no surprise- we had already planned almost our entire wedding, including the date. Because of how things played out at the time with Covid, we had 16 guests at our wedding who were all fully vaccinated. Everything was cheap and simple. We got married on 4/3/21 (get it?!) in my in-laws backyard and I swear it felt like a fairytale. It was the most magical day, and I wouldn't change a single thing about it. I've included some pictures because yes, I am still obsessed with them.

Also notable: I got a new job, and this is perhaps even bigger news than my marriage. If you know me personally, you know I had been job searching for about a year. I have found myself in a job that fulfills my soul in a way I can't describe. Some of my now-favorite people are my colleagues, and I'm excited to wake up each morning and go into the office. Things are different, and things are mostly good. 

As the new Hicks family, we have endured some hardship, as has everyone else. We have tragically lost lives and we have gained precious new ones. There's been triumph, heartbreak, and everything in between. I want to start talking about it again, sharing my experiences and commiserating with those going through similar things. Let's get started (again), shall we? 

Cheers to the last *16-ish months, and on we go to the next. 

And Go Your Way In Safety

 

A college friend of mine and a talented photographer/badass Doctor-to-be, Lauren Rakes, took this picture the spring of my senior year in college. The picture was taken at my very specific request and as soon as she turned the camera around to show me, I cried. I am obviously in my regalia, ready to walk across the stage, shake some hands that I don’t know, and receive my long-awaited diploma. I am also wearing my grandfather’s St. Christopher pendant that he wore until the day he went to the hospital before he died. It says, “Behold St. Christopher, and go your way in safety.” A proud Christian, he wore it as a religious symbol, but when I became the owner of the piece, its meaning began to take a new shape. In my mind now, it still signifies a journey. To me personally, it represents the end of one journey and the beginning of another. I chose to wear it for these pictures because as far as material things go, it is my most prized possession. I also knew the picture would be really special to my dad, which is part of why I did it. Sappy, I know. This is why I’m the favorite child. 

The picture exemplifies the paradox I felt that semester: the triumph of some very difficult things countered by the exciting things yet to come. I chose that particular line from The Greatest Showman to put on my graduation cap because I thought it was clever and cute. It was a little nod to pop culture at the time (I’m usually bad at that) and it summed up my college career, as I was a less-than-stellar student. There were a lot of times many people, myself included, didn’t think I could make it because I was a depressed lump of a human who definitely did not write a good paper or test well. Regardless, I scraped by and set out to document the occasion. I did my hair and makeup to perfection and took my graduation pictures on the most beautiful campus in the world. 

It was a strange feeling. That semester was a weird one, all things considered. I wasn’t speaking to some of my best friends and I did a remarkable job of isolating myself from the people that mattered most. I was extremely emotional about leaving the life I had worked so hard to create, much less leave it for the unknown. At that time, my future was not entirely concrete and if you know anything about me, you know I’m a planner. I do not wing things (aside from my Instagram stories and things I try to bake) and I am meticulous (anxious?) about every detail. College was a glorious disaster full of the unexpected and when I graduated, I thought I conquered the beast. 

And then I hit graduate school. And working full-time while going to school full-time. And navigating the world without the support system I had found in college. And losing so many parts of myself and finding so many more. When I graduated college, I breathed a giant sigh of relief. When I exhaled, I let out every bad feeling I had been holding back in order to survive. I don’t really know how to describe it other than “hot mess”. I flirted with a slew of mental health problems that I incessantly tried to address but I didn’t get anywhere for quite some time. I went through a couple of comically bad relationships and had a little taste of heartbreak. Later, I received what I consider to be a life-saving treatment for those aforementioned mental health problems and I met my favorite person in the whole world that I get to have by my side. So, all in all, a roller coaster. 

Long story short, I’m trying to say I’m done with grad school. It’s finished, I graduated, I survived. Graduation from grad school is a little different, obviously. Life looks a lot different than it did when I graduated undergrad, even though not much time has passed at all. I’m an actual adult now and I certainly was not then. I have a future, one I worked really hard to create. I don’t want to say it’s not a big deal because it definitely is, but it seems like it’s not a big deal. First off, it got cancelled. I know there are way bigger issues, but I’m still bummed out about it. I was excited to get a little break and celebrate, but now just isn’t the time. People are dying and this moment of quiet triumph is happening during a time that is so heartbreaking for many, many people. I am preoccupied with mourning with the rest of the world, but I also want to take a minute to be proud of myself.

I finished the thing I really thought I wouldn’t. I got through many an all-nighter, I survived many tears at my kitchen table and even more in my office at work. I went through a twisted, invaluable, sleepless journey that I never thought I could navigate. I try to include a little call to action in a lot of my writing, so here it is: take this as a sign that you can do that thing you think you can’t. I swear to you, I never thought I could do any of the things I have done in the past two years. To be a little cliched and storybook, one journey has ended, I owned it, and the best journey yet is most certainly beginning. I hope you find yours too, and I hope you go your way in safety. 

Cheers to the last 99 days, and on we go to the next (as Alison Roepke, MPH!!!).

The Other F-Word

 CW: This post mentions eating disorders and restrictive eating. 

I am fat. Yes, fat. Fat is my second favorite f-word. I like it for a lot of reasons. I like it because it makes people uncomfortable and that honestly gives me a little bit of joy. As one of my favorite influencers recently mentioned, we as fat people are allowed to relish in people other than us sitting with uncomfortable feelings surrounding this topic. So often we are burdened with holding this discomfort, so it’s kind of nice when we don’t have to. We don’t necessarily hold discomfort about our own weight, rather we live in a society that does not accept or support our feelings as fat people, and that is very uncomfortable.

Let me give you a little bit of background information: I was really skinny when I was a little kid. I can still remember someone telling me around the age of 4 or 5 that I was “thin as a rail.” I didn’t know what it meant and I went home and looked at the wooden rail on our staircase wondering what that could possibly have to do with my body. This was the first time I remember someone commenting on my body and as you might guess, it did not stop there. I was not thin for long. I plumped up and I was a fat kid. I struggled to find clothes in my age group that could fit me and I was constantly taught that there was something majorly wrong with that. Grown adults would talk about their diets in front of me, would comment on my clothes being a little snug, and would encourage me to run around more at recess. I learned very early in life that my fat body was something shameful. 

I was fat for my entire childhood. I was fat until I was 14 years old. I mercilessly dieted from as far back as I can remember. In the fifth grade, a friend and I sat inside during recess to make diet and exercise plans for ourselves. This behavior was very normal to me. I watched all the adults in my life obsess over the very same things; I heard them talk constantly about food and weight. I tried any diet that was accessible to me as a child and thought that because I was still fat, I was a failure. I often cried going shopping for clothes with my mom and I watched her heart break over my hatred of my own body, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be thin my whole life. Every grown woman in my life made it clear that that being thin was the pinnacle of success, and we were to spend our whole lives chasing thinness.

Well, I finally did it. My first year of high school, I stopped eating carbs. I would not eat one single carb-ridden food. I wouldn’t even eat fruit for fear that I would halt my progress. I would typically skip breakfast and follow it with skipping lunch or picking at something, telling friends that I had a big breakfast or didn’t feel well. I was miserable. I was even more miserable because people noticed, and they noticed often. My friends would encourage me to eat more than a sugar-free jello cup for lunch and I refused. I told them it was none of their business and that they didn’t have a right to comment on what I ate. Others praised me to no end. My family celebrated every pound lost and showered me with compliments. It was the first time in my life I ever heard things like that. Because I was now tall and thin, people told me I could be a model. I ate it up, no pun intended. Their compliments fueled me to push myself harder. I grew thinner and thinner, but I also got progressively unhealthier. I developed a list of symptoms ranging from GI issues to reproductive system issues to chronic headaches, none of which I had before. I would sleep for hours when I got home from school every single day. I was so exhausted I couldn’t function. I went to doctor after doctor and I didn’t get answers from anyone.  

I was ultimately diagnosed with an eating disorder when I was in college, far after most of the damage was done. Not-so-coincidentally, I was also diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder in the same timeframe. There is significant data that links the prevalence of eating disorders to autoimmune disorders in women. The same doctor diagnosed both of them in me and she always felt there was a strong connection given my history and timeline of symptoms. The damage I did to my body during that time will stay with me for the rest of my life. Because I deprived my body of so many essential things during my formative growing years, it stopped working and started attacking itself. I eventually gained all the weight (and more) back, and I’m so thankful I did. However, I wasn’t thankful at the time, believe me.

Years after weight gain came some major healing. I didn’t start to truly heal from this until after college. I realize I am in the minority and really privileged by what I’m about to say, but something just finally clicked with me. Many people suffer through decades of relapse and treatment and I am truly thankful I didn’t go through that. Something clicked that told me that I shouldn’t worry about it anymore. Maybe it was because I made some pretty great progress in life quickly after college and realized I did that without being thin. I suddenly realized I am worthy of good things as a fat person, not even despite being a fat person. I no longer have a goal to lose weight. I don’t think I ever will again. I started focusing on my other goals, like those related to my relationships and my career. For lack of a better saying, I realized I have way bigger fish to fry than to worry about the number on a scale. 

I previously mentioned feelings of discomfort that fat people live with sometimes. For me, those feelings come when I realize I am someone else’s worst nightmare. Not only am I overweight, but I openly enjoy “unhealthy” foods and celebrate my body. That scares people. That does make me sad sometimes, but not for me. I’m sad for the people that think that. All too often, I find myself surrounded by people (mostly women) who talk tirelessly about their eating habits, about “being good”, and about those holiday pounds they’ve just GOT to get off before swimsuit season. Here is where I challenge you to ask yourself: why does this matter to me so much? What about being fat makes someone unworthy? What about having a fat body is your worst nightmare? I know it might make you uncomfortable to really, truly think about those answers. I invite you to sit in that discomfort and get to the root of why you’re so deathly afraid of being fat. There is a lot of work to be done by our society in this regard.  

Fat people deserve to live how they damn well please. We are allowed to exercise without the intention of losing weight, we are allowed to eat ice cream, we are allowed to cover up or show every single inch of ourselves if we like. We are allowed to be fit AND fat, wildly unhealthy, or somewhere in between. We are allowed to do what we want, and you can’t judge us. I really wish I didn’t have to say that, but here we are. As a final reminder that some of y’all desperately need: someone else’s body, whether it’s fat, thin, or anything else, is never any of your fucking business. 

Cheers to the last 99 days, and on we go to the next. 

Three Years and Some Holiday Cheer (?)

 

You can never really prepare yourself for the worst, right? I’m a big fan of this whole Enneagram thing and I am a proud, anxious type 6. By nature, sixes imagine every worst possible scenario in an attempt to be prepared for everything. What I personally end up doing is being anxious about everything. I like to think sometimes they go hand-in-hand and I am simply being REALISTIC, but maybe that’s just to make myself feel better. I spend a lot of time thinking about worst-case scenarios. I think about my plan for when I get fired from my job, for when my best friends decide I’m no longer worth their time, and for when my apartment burns down because God forbid, I left the dryer on for the last 20 minutes of its cycle as I leave for work. I think about worst-case scenarios for every-day things, their consequences merely inconvenient, but not earth-shattering. But what happens when you don’t prepare for the literal, actual worst? 

I’ll tell you what: it knocks you right on your ass, or punches you in the stomach, or takes every breath away from you. Maybe it’s a combination of the three. You spend the coming days, months, or even years trying to recover from the piece of you that you lost, the piece you never really expected to lose. You spend some days in a fog so dense you can’t see a foot in front of you. You spend some days trudging through sticky molasses trying to accomplish simple tasks at work. You wake up and begin your day, running on autopilot until you get home and stare at the ceiling until by some miracle, you fall asleep. Other days are different: you’re excited about the lunch you packed, you thank the heavens for the blue sky, and you dance in the living room to a song that makes your heart flutter. 

The “worst” thing is different for everyone, but I think the common outcome is grief. Grief and grieving in our society is most often associated with death, which is still correct. The death of a loved one is really, really tough and that type of grief has the ability to melt you from the inside out. However, we need to acknowledge that people experience grief for a multitude of reasons and all of those reasons are valid. We grieve the loss of people, jobs, moments in time, and pieces of ourselves. We often crave the way things once were, and I think that’s grief, simply put. It’s easy to focus on how we were before we lost that person, before we moved away from what we call home, before that bad thing happened. This is not an “always” feeling. You might wake up one morning after months of good days and feel a big empty hole in your heart.  It’s a blessing and a curse that it comes in waves for many people; those waves can be really intense and hard to push through, and since they might be rare, they’re confusing.

All this is to say, I’m in a strange period of grieving. This could be because life is evolving pretty rapidly for me or because it’s the holidays or because I’m certifiably nuts. We’re approaching the third anniversary (I feel weird calling it that) of grief-worthy events and that’s always tough. For me, it leaves me wondering what things would have been like had events transpired differently. I think about the days I’ve lost to these feelings and I think about what I would have done with those days. Life is evolving for the better, but it still evokes really powerful emotions that I don’t really know how to express. If I’m being honest, I don’t even know what I’m feeling so I don’t know what to express. Things are crazy all around me, everyone buzzing between houses and parties and shopping malls. While seemingly everyone else is posting their best holiday pictures perched in their skimpy velvet dresses and sipping champagne, I am standing still, and I am standing here alone. I feel alone in this period of grief and sadness and it certainly feels like I will be stuck here forever. 

The tricky thing is this: life keeps going. I kind of hate that. I’m selfish and I want the world to stop around me when I feel like my world has stopped. I’m angry that everyone else’s worlds keep turning when mine has come to a screeching halt for whatever reason. It’s jealousy for what I perceive, which is undoubtedly false. Everyone deals with this and a lot of people have miserable days, especially at this time of year. We all deal with grief and we have all suffered major losses in our lives, whatever that looks like. Part of the bad news is that it often comes when you least expect it. Those aforementioned waves well up under the surface and are upon you before you can even turn around to see them. The good news is that the waves will crash and it will be mighty and ugly, but you will wade through the water once again. The water might even be a little murky, but if you look really hard, you can still see your feet at the bottom. 

Cheers to the last 99 days, and on we go to the next.

Geography

 

I was a geography major in college and if you let me, I will talk your ear off about it forever and you will absolutely wish you hadn’t asked. I changed my major 4 times (!!!) in college so arriving at geography was quite a process and it was honestly somewhat random. What made me fall in love with the subject was not the maps or the spatial analysis of disease (don’t get me wrong, I will nerd out over that stuff any day of the week), but the human connections that are present within geography and how location influences them. One of my very favorite professors in college lectured about the subject on the first day of my final semester. He had us all consider our hometowns and our connections to and within them. We made homemade maps of our old stomping grounds as they existed in our heads and discussed everything from sweet family memories to our first heartbreaks, all of which were connected to specific locations. The very reason we study geography is to better understand the human race. It’s our memories of various places that make the physical locations feel special. It’s how a dim parking lot outside of your high school turns forever more into the place where you had your very first kiss. We all have places that are special to us in ways that are hard to explain. I have come to know this “special but hard to explain” feeling as nostalgia. 

The idea of nostalgia reminds me of a warm light. The kind of warm light I’m thinking of feels like a million tiny kisses on your skin and paints the whole world a glowing, delicious gold color. It feels like meeting your best friends for ice cream on a sticky, humid summer night and talking for hours about everything and nothing. Nostalgia in my head is only good. It makes me want to sing songs from summer camp when I was a kid and bask in all my soulful glory. Nostalgia in my real life is...different. I’ve come to realize it can be a pretty toxic emotion for me. Instead of making me feel warm and glowy, it often makes me feel nothing short of aggressively sad. I do want to sing songs from summer camp and reminisce about the past, but I want to cry about it. It brings the realest, rawest emotions to the surface and sometimes that doesn’t feel anything close to warm and glowy. Nostalgia for me is both profoundly sad and so, so happy. As I previously mentioned, this feeling is very connected to place for many people, but for me especially. The place that evokes such intense feelings for me is the mountains, specifically the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

I have done an awful lot of growing up in the mountains of Virginia. My very earliest memory of the mountains is apple-picking with my grandparents (otherwise known as Boo-Boo and Papa), my sisters, and our cousin Max. We were all little and we got all the way to the top of the mountain, someone threw up from car sickness (probably me), and our adventure was over. This doesn’t sound like it would be a good memory, but it made an impact on me and set the stage for future memory-making. Apple-picking in later years would always feel like a journey and the beginning of something new. Fast forward to my tween years, and I learned to love the mountains in a new, powerful way. I went to summer camp in the most charming little mountain town by the name of Orkney Springs and found pure, untouched mountain magic. Summer camp honestly sounds pretty stupid to people who never went to summer camp, but if you were lucky enough to go, you know. I felt loved, accepted, and supported just as I was and for a painfully awkward 12-year-old, that was priceless. I still know all the words to my favorite songs and the opening chords of some of them still make me teary-eyed. Finally, and perhaps the most important of my mountain memories, is college. Southwest Virginia is the most beautiful place and so much happened there. Some of the worst things in my life thus far happened in Blacksburg and for a long time, I thought moving away would make it all sting less. What I realize now is that I survived all those terrible things in that environment and most importantly, I found home. Over the years, the mountains became my home and became the place where I found peace and solace. Even through horribly difficult things, I learned to lean on the amazing people around me and I learned that it’s okay (and often wonderful and cathartic) to cry on top of a mountain while you watch the most spectacular sunset and think about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I am so incredibly lucky to have seen so much of this world at such a young age. Sometimes I feel like I’ve left pieces of my heart all over the earth, but an especially big piece is planted permanently in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Even though it hurts so bad to leave, I realize those feelings simply come from love. The memories that connect me to the mountains from even hundreds of miles away are made of all kinds of fuzzy, warm love that has simply changed form. Love changes form because we’re humans and how we express and interpret love switches by the minute. I know it’s not always going to feel warm and fuzzy and that can be very confusing. Families become disconnected, summer camp ends for the year, you move on from your college days, and the place you found your home is no longer where you live. The disgustingly cheesy, beautiful thing is that all that love will always exist in our world, no matter our geographical location. We will always have those memories to warm our chilly little hearts. Lean into it; let the memories sweep you away and give you butterflies. Allow yourself to feel all those nostalgic feelings, whether they make you smile, cry, or a whole lot of both. 

Cheers to the last 99 days, and on we go to the next. 

Recapitulation

 

My therapist has a really extensive vocabulary. He uses words that I have never heard before and he spends quite a lot of time in our weekly sessions explaining those words to me. Sometimes I roll my eyes, throw in an exaggerated sigh, and ask him to dumb things down. He always refuses. He says it’s “healthy” to be challenged this way and I think he is often amused at my dramatized displeasure. The guy has like 12 degrees hanging on his wall and definitely knows what he’s talking about, but this sentiment frustrates me. I do like learning new words and it’s actually helped me get better at asking for help. This has translated into a lot of parts of my life and I feel a lot less silly about admitting I don’t know what I’m doing. You win this one, therapy. 

One of the words I learned recently is capitulation and in turn, recapitulation. I don’t know why this one stuck with me (it’s been a few months since he used it) but I’ve thought about writing a blog post about it since then. If you don’t know what it means, PLEASE, let me be the one to enlighten you. Capitulate stems from something in the bible somewhere I think (he did a way better job of explaining but I’ll give you the cliff notes) and it means to surrender or end a battle. Now, somehow or another, recapitulate means to summarize and go over the main points. You know, like recap. My therapist used it in a way that was asking me how much I think about the past and how much I mull over what has been said and done. The truth is, it’s not that much. Anxiety has people worried about things other than the present; people often worry about the past or the future instead of living in the now. Generally, I am much more anxious about the future. I worry about what I will do, how I’ll handle things, and what my life will be. Historically, I’ve spent very little time reflecting. That is, until now. 

In the month or so that I haven’t written anything for this blog, I’ve been thinking about events that got me here. It’s July and I’m in the middle of what feels like absolute magic. Summer is my favorite time for so many reasons and there are a lot of things that are making it extra sweet right now. The feeling of freedom leftover from being a kid out of school combined with abundant sunshine and warmth makes me feel light and floaty. As much as I love the nature of summer, I have to address the fact that it’s not all about the season; I have made a lot of conscious decisions that got me to this blissful, floaty feeling. For the first time, I am putting myself first. I have struggled with self-worth my entire life and deciding that I am worthy enough to be my own first priority has been really difficult. However, I decided that the way I have been living for a long time wasn’t working very well, so I tried some new ways of thinking. 

First and foremost, I stopped apologizing. Not when I’ve actually done something wrong, mind you. Owning up to your behavior is incredibly important, but I’m talking about unnecessarily apologizing. Women tend to do this more than men, because we feel sorry for even taking up space and being people. Reason #1631 why we need to smash the patriarchy and shatter every glass ceiling, but let me get back on topic. Instead of apologizing, I have started thanking people. This was not my idea (I saw it on Facebook) but it has worked wonders. The most popular one for me is “Thank you for your patience.” I am scatter-brained about 110% of the time, especially at work. I make a LOT of mistakes. Here’s the secret: so does everyone else. Humans are messy. Thank those around you for sticking with you through those hiccups, but don’t apologize for being human. 

Second and kind of related to the first, I stopped doing a lot of things. That is, I stopped doing things that did not make me feel good about myself. You absolutely do not have to do things that don’t make you feel good about yourself. Now, this isn’t the same as being a little outside of your comfort zone. You should challenge yourself and some of your limits, but that’s a different topic. Don’t spend time with people who do not make you feel amazing and don’t give them a piece of that precious little soul of yours. Don’t text your ex back, stop following those “fitness” accounts that have you weighing yourself 10 times a day, and stop agreeing to social functions that make you so nervous you feel like barfing before you go inside. Okay, these are very specific to me, but you get the idea.

Finally, and please don’t take this the wrong way, realize no one gives a single fuck about what you’re doing. As absorbed as you are in your own thoughts and actions, realize that everyone else is the same way. People care deeply and immensely about you, but not in the way that you think. They care about that aforementioned precious little soul of yours, not the tiny mistakes you make. You are your own worst critic, and I promise no one else is scrutinizing your every move like you are. Let it go. 

I know not everything works for everyone. However, I know that all of these things are helping me and I highly encourage you to try some of these practices. They’re slow changes and you can take them one day at a time. You are SO worth it. You’re not selfish, you’re not greedy. You deserve to be your own first priority. Try it for a bit, then recapitulate. 

Cheers to the last 99 days, and on we go to the next.