different places, different faces

I spent the first 34 years of my life in Nebraska. I lived in the small capital city of Lincoln, which was comprised largely of families that had either lived there for generations and couldn’t fathom leaving, or people from teeny tiny farm towns across the state who had dreamed of moving to the “big city” one day. ⠀

The unfolding of life for a gal there followed a rather traditional order; go to school, go to more school, get a job, find a husband, buy a house, have some kids, maybe or maybe not quit your job to stay home with the kids, attend a gazillion home tupperware type parties, drink a lot of booze, get divorced, maybe find another husband. ⠀

Honestly, I could never wrap my head around it. In high school, it became clear to me that I wasn’t motivated by the accolades and outcomes the other kids seemed to care about, and I didn’t know what to do about it… so I rebelled. ⠀

Mere moments into my 20’s, I found myself pregnant and decided it was time to “get responsible” and do the “white-picket-fence-thing” that the others were doing, and so I did. ⠀

Shortly after the clock struck midnight in my mid-twenties, I transformed back into my rebellious self, looked bewilderingly around me, and thought to myself, “Who in the fuck’s life is this?” (because it surely couldn’t be mine, right?) ⠀

I sold the house, left the husband, and conjured up the dream to move to California. Seven years later, with only some loose change and ‘The Secret’ in my pocket, I did just that. ⠀

I truly thought that if I got the hell out of Nebraska, suddenly life would be grand. I thought that by moving far away from the source of my troubles, all the feelings of being stuck, dissatisfied, and purposeless would somehow fade away into the past, ceasing to exist at all. ⠀

Boy, was I in for a surprise. ⠀

I found nothing but more of the same troubles, plus some extra ones, right there in California. ⠀

Did this stop me from attempting to flee from myself again? No, it did not. ⠀

I ran up and down the West Coast for a year. After that, I ran from Hawaii to Colorado, and back again. I then fled Hawaii (from a flailing relationship), right on over to Bali, and then from Bali to a new (abusive) relationship in Colorado. I tried to exit that shitshow by fleeing to familiar sunny California, but ended up returning to the creep in Colorado for a short time before running back to Hawaii again, with him in tow. ⠀

At this point, I was a shell of a human from the abuse and the sheer rollercoaster of my life, but somehow I managed to flee one last time back to Bali, where the relationship ended in a fiery inferno. It was then that life pointed a very stern finger at me and said, “YOU ARE GROUNDED MISSY.” ⠀

The world was locked down, and in an instant, I lost my freedom to flee, and I was forced to face myself in a way I never had before. ⠀

I began looking back over my past with the sobering truth that I had not managed to escape my problems at all, but had actually just been recreating them in a myriad of different places with a cornucopia of different faces. ⠀

I had used all manners of locale, relationships, substances, and even spiritual seeking to elude myself. It was as if I had enrolled in the witness protection program, but the only one I was hiding from was myself. ⠀

I was cornered in a boutique hotel in Indonesia, and had no choice but to do the “real” work of deciding what it meant to love myself, and then being audacious enough to actually do it. ⠀

Loving myself well is a choice I make every day, to the (increasingly) best of my ability. ⠀

I know that in order to move on to the life I am being called to next, without dragging my old problems with me, I must make peace with all the aspects of myself and my life. ⠀

It’s pretty clear to me, at this point, after a lifetime of rebelling and running, that I cannot escape myself, no matter how hard I try (and boy did I try. I tried hard, and it nearly destroyed me) ⠀