Where I Stand

Photo by Mitchell Hartley on Unsplash

It was after the simplest of nights spent with long-time friends that I walked away with my heart feeling full. I’d managed to meet up with my three college roommates, despite hundreds of miles separating us, with me residing in Ohio, another living in Denver, and a third just recently moving to the area.

It’s one of those evenings where you open a bottle of wine, start catching up, and before you know it, the sun has sunk below the horizon, it’s pitch-black out, and you’re still chatting away. 

There’s laughter, real moments, vulnerability, and everything in between.

It was at the end of the night when one of my friends and I were talking on our drive home and she said something that struck me.

“I’m just trying to get comfortable standing exactly where I am.”

Her words deeply resonated with me because when I stopped to think about it, perhaps that was exactly what I was doing in building Minus A Plus One. I was blogging each week, sharing my own vulnerabilities and working through them in the hopes it provides comfort and connection to others. 

And with each post each week, I am consistently learning to be comfortable exactly where I am.

It’s been a constant struggle for me. The question of if I’m enough. Have I accomplished enough? Should I be further along? (Spoiler alert – I often think I should be. And have to remind myself often that it’s okay. That I’m okay).

When do we start to give ourselves grace to be exactly where we are?

Whether it’s single.

Divorced.

Beginning a separation or dissolution of marriage.

Learning to live without a loved one.

Struggling living alongside one.

Or most recently, maybe it’s understanding how to be okay with a ‘new normal’ – many of which are far from our original expectations and hopes.

It is a never-ending effort for me to be still. To be present. To forgive myself for the mistakes of my past and to feel less anxious about the future. And for a moment, just to be.

I felt her words. I related. 

But as her words turned over in my mind, I started to look deeper into my own life, questions taking root and breaking through to the surface.

Was it a lack of being able to be present … or a gnawing deep down inside that perhaps, my present no longer makes sense? Is that why I often feel unsettled? Or, am I grasping at straws to justify an existence I hadn’t anticipated?

For more than eight years, I have been on an island, far from my family and roots. First in Seattle, and now in Columbus. These leaps I made completely on my own, motivated by an opportunity to advance in my career, but also to challenge myself personally. Each forced me to figure out the way forward with no lifeline and with minimal support intially – and they’ve shaped me into a better version of myself than I ever thought possible. The fear of the unknowns that come with a new city I have now normalized. The ability to rebuild. The belief in myself that came only from proving it possible. It has been an incredible journey of growth and learning in my time of creating new support systems so far from the one I was raised with.

But as the calendar quickly approaches the 6-month mark since everyone’s worlds changed, since our routines and sense of normal were stripped away, exactly where I am has started to make less sense.

Why am I okay missing the moments that matter? The birthdays and Sunday dinners and my nieces and nephews growing up. In the past, I felt like my time away was a period in which I was growing. Changing. Stretching my comfort zone. 

But as I feel my way around where I stand currently, I don’t see a way to push back the finish line. My growth feels stalled. Those around me seem to keep moving forward while I look for ways to fill the time. And I’ve realized any version of love beyond friendship in my present only exists more than 700 miles away with my family back home. 

It could be a phase. An offset of a challenging year. The output of too much time to think and be still. 

Or maybe it’s a wakeup call I was too busy to notice. I was traveling too much to hear. Maybe her words were the exact words I needed to hear to continue to challenge what I had already started to realize deep down inside. The fact that I am not comfortable exactly where I stand because I no longer make sense here. It was the reason why buying a house hasn’t felt right. The feeling that it is time to get out of my comfort zone I’ve created over the last five years and find where I really want to put down roots that made sense for me.

This year will change all of us. Some changes good, some heartbreaking and challenging and unfair, but as the world has been forced to slow down, I have been allowed to see what matters most when nearly every ounce of normalcy is stripped away. And while the year has brought isolation and tears and deafening loneliness, perhaps in the end, it will be what some of us needed to see what’s truly in front of us.