Two Worlds

Photo from Unsplash

I spent last week traveling back to my hometown in Iowa to surprise my mom for Mother’s Day. Despite leaving my home state more than eight years ago, I still love long trips home and crave the chaos awaiting me when I walk through the front door. My single heart is overjoyed at the family meals that will take place as we are gathered around our kitchen table, and the laughter to be exchanged over the firepit on the deck in the black of night.

My family has always been the last house on the left in my small town of 3,000 people. I grew up in a farming community with cornfields practically in my backyard. Our house has been the same layout all my life. When the city extended our street in 2005, my parents simply bought the same corner lot two blocks down and rebuilt a newer version of the original.

It’s a town where everyone knows their neighbors, most go to church and familiar faces have followed me throughout my entire life. And everywhere I looked, I watched everyone around me live what seemed to be very similar lives.

Grow up. Fall in love. Marry. House. Kids.

These are all things I’ve always wanted. For the first 18 years of my existence, it was all I knew life could be.

But then the second 18 years of my life happened; nearly two decades of contradictions of what I thought to be true growing up.

I dated some great guys but spent the majority of my 20’s and 30’s pursuing ones who didn’t deserve me and running away from those who did. When I did settle down with a good human on the rare occasion the stars aligned, nothing ever felt right long term. I always felt I was better on my own; no one seemed like a fit long term for me. They didn’t seem to be on fire like I was, wanting to challenge norms and grow and stretch alongside me.

Without that life partner, I didn’t fit into the love-marry-house-kids path so many of my peers were on.

So, I slowly created a world that fit me. I gathered others like me – not in a physical sense, but in spirit. Driven, ambitious, brave. Thinkers and doers. World travelers, people who wanted to do things in this life, who happily exclaimed “Cheers!” over drinks at night but push themselves during the day to live life in this big, full and beautiful life.

It was different than what I thought it would be, but I had carefully crafted an existence in which I could thrive. A life where, when I went through my camera roll, it was a collection of incredible moments and a path I was proud of starring in.

And it was enough.

If I stayed within the borders of my world all was manageable. If I looked around and saw others like me, I felt safe. Validated. Content.

As long as I didn’t peak outside the curtains.

With the smallest of glances, a quiet longing suddenly gains volume. As Theodore Roosevelt stated, “Comparison is the thief of joy” and this thief comes for me often. Through my mindless scrolling on social media, friends and neighbors moving away and starting new chapters with loved ones, and even trips back home.

Back home is often a bittersweet homecoming. Where my nephew melts against me for naps and invites me into his world of make believe and imagination. Where my niece is a little closer to becoming an adult with each trip home and maturing faster than I can keep up, fitting into my clothes and already encompassing more style than I ever had at any age.

They breathe life into me upon my trips home, as do the hugs and love from my parents, siblings and best friend who always makes time for me each trip back.

But they also tug at my heart as a reminder of the life I’ve wanted and haven’t found.

My family and their home have remained a sliver of stability as I have pushed outside my comfort zone in life. A place of familiarity as I continued to pursue the unknown.

My nephew crawls into my lap and asks me to stay. I tell him I’ll be here the whole week and he cheers, oblivious to time or days at his age, or any understanding as to why he often can only see me through the screen of his mom’s phone.

My little sister texts me after I leave and said she dreamed I lived closer and she came to visit me all the time. I smile after I read it but also feel a pang of sadness. I breath in deeply, wanting two conflicting lives and wisher the two were closer than they are.

It’s when I’m home I realize how much I am missing; how many moments I’m unable to share. The joy that bursts from this child and his silly games and insistence to “do it again, Katie, do it again!” over and over, his delight never fading.

And yet my place doesn’t feel here. I don’t see my fit among the rows of houses with their families inside. My peer group in my home state had already settled down, some with complete families, just as I was finding my wings. And as much as I want to be closer to my family, I feel safer inside the walls of the world I’ve created, where I can seek comfort in others living like me.

Maybe I’ll always feel a bit lost; a bit conflicted. Maybe we all are, in some way, much of the time. There are fleeting moments of feeling as though you’ve got it all figured out, but the world is constantly moving and shifting. And even the strongest, the most stable, and the most put-together feel like they are stumbling as often as they are standing tall. That their life makes sense as much as they wonder how it could look different.

Brenè Brown stated in her famous Ted Talk on The Power of Vulnerability (viewed more than  47 million times on You Tube) that “[we’re] imperfect and wired for struggle, but [we] are worthy of love and belonging.” Maybe she’s right, and I’m wired to feel struggle as I navigate life feeling pulled in two conflicting directions. To want to be two places at once; to find a way to thrive in my career and city and not be so far from home.

But she got the last part right, too. No matter where my feet are planted, no matter where I’ve been or where life takes me, I am worthy of love and belonging.

And in the end, I’m lucky to have found that in both worlds.