holy fucking shit.
we're about two months away from Jesse being done with school. I feel like it was just yesterday that we kept telling people that he has two more years, and they would say, you've been saying that for years! Yes. We have. And now its over. Almost. And you know what that means... let the panic begin!! These next six months are going to be full of the most wonderfully terrifying changes in our lives. I know without a doubt that this is what I want: get out of Utah. Start our life over again, somewhere new, without the chains of Mormonism, far outside our comfort zone. But that doesn't mean every moment will be hard as fuck for me. It will require a level of strength I haven't had to face since last year, when all that shit went down with my parents. My anxiety makes change very, very difficult for me. Even change I want. Even change I'm excited about it.
Side note. I've had anxiety ever since I was a child. I know this now. I would cry about not turning in an assignment on time. I would have panic attacks over my ponytail not being perfect centered, or one shoe being tied tighter than the other or having socks that didn't match. I've been chronically late my entire life; elementary/middle school/high school/every job ever. I never got any help for it. Instead, when I was 16 and I began to feel the "shame" of having sexual desire as a teenager, and began to withdraw from the "perfect" culture I was surrounded by, my mother decided I was "Clinically Depressed." I remember the exact moment when she "Diagnosed" me. She was a therapist. She still doesn't realize, I don't have clinical depression. I doubt ever did. Situational depression, sure, off and on through my life. But I have always had anxiety. Longer than I can even remember. Yet I lived with that label for so long, never getting the help I truly needed - stress and panic management. Tools to breathe, to calm myself, to focus on getting past the moment of distress and back to my usual, cheerful self. Ha. Because of that label, I still don't see myself as a "cheerful" person. But I truly am. I was people-watching at a bar last weekend with a friend of mine, and mentioned to her that I wish I could pull off the "alternative" look - died punk hair, piercings, dark/ripped clothing, this girl with dreads looked super cute. She mentioned that I seemed too "happy" for that. This girl knows me. I've always been myself around her. And she thinks I'm happy. She's not wrong, I just forget that its true, because once I was told I was "Depressed" I didn't feel like I could ever be anything else. Its who I was now. My grandmother was Depressed, my father and sister were Depressed, and now me. I was stuck.
I'm not saying that's everyone's experience with being diagnosed with clinical depression. But for me, it was a bad call, the wrong call, and had a negative impact on me. It clouded the true issues - the anxiety I was born with and the self-hatred I was ingrained with.
Alright. So back to this. At this point, two months from graduation, here's what we don't know: where we will be living six months from now. Not even what state. How long it'll take for Jesse to find a decent job. How long I'll be working at Conservice. How we'll find a place to live and move all our shit. Here's what we do know: I will cry. A lot. I hate Utah and yet it has been my home for every conscious year of my life. I will miss the familiar feeling I have driving the length of I-15, of knowing where every In-n-Out is, of having memories scattered around the state from moving dozens of times of the course of my life. This past year, I've worked really fucking hard to make friends. And I have made some amazing ones. And I will miss them. I'll be terrified to leave their faces, knowing I may never see them again. Knowing our relationship will be going digital, and that can fade over time. I will miss my nieces and nephews, I will miss my sister and brother-in-law who have supported me so much over the past couple years. I will miss being able to casually hang with family in my "comfy clothes" with dirty hair and no makeup on. I will miss bonding with every exmormon I come across (very few I've met I haven't instantly felt a bond with) (and I come across a lot). I will miss the mountains. I will miss the trees. I have this (mostly) irrational fear that I'll move to a place without trees and how will I survive without those brief instances when I stare at a tree, breathe in, and continue my day feeling a little more peaceful and grounded? I will miss the often-beautiful spring/summer/fall and I won't miss a single goddamn bit of the goddamn cold-ass 95% hideous winter.
I don't know what the future will hold for me. I'll have to start over on the friend-making game; luckily I feel have a good bit of practice at this point. I don't know if I'll keep working. I'd like to do some volunteer work (like becoming a court-appointed advocate for children) and maybe even get a job at a non-profit. I don't know if we'll start talking more seriously about having our own children. Hopefully we'll be able to focus more on fixing our current child. Hopefully we'll be able to do a little more traveling, though first we need to pay down some of our debt.
These next two months are going to go so fast. I've been waiting for it to be over for so long that the not waiting will be a shock to the system. I'm ready. We're ready. We will be brave. We will hold each other through the chaos of life-change. We will give our hearts away again and again to new people, places, and experiences.
And I'll probably do a lot of crying. Its just the way I am.
love,
lisapink
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