Being Enough

Hello, invisible audience. It’s been a really, really long time.

Don’t think that because I disappeared that I forgot about you – in fact, I think about you all the time. However, my life has changed in such profound ways since I sent out my last real blog post about the panic I felt as I drove into Mexico that I haven’t even known where to start. Barring the occasional resurfacing, it turns out that restarting took almost two years.

I’m not sure if this post will be the beginning of more regular blog posts from me, but I’ve decided to dip my toes into the water, to see if I still have anything to say. The fact that I’ve decided to write after an almost sleepless night is probably more significant than I’d like to admit. At any rate, here I am.

I have been thinking a lot lately about being enough. For the first time in many years, I moved in to a shared house at the beginning of the month, and I’ve found my insecurities came to join me like so many long-lost friends and extra roommates. Am I clean enough? Am I quiet enough? Am I loading the dishwasher correctly? Are my anxieties as apparent as I think they are?

Someone pointed out to me that in 34 years of life I have lived more than many people who are in their 60’s, and I realized that therein lies the problem. On the one hand, I try not to compare myself to others because in so many ways it makes me feel inadequate – Why don’t I own a house yet? Why do I still drive an old car? Why can’t I bring myself to rock the trucker hat? – while on the other hand I rarely give myself the credit I deserve for what I have accomplished, even if those accomplishments are only important to me.

Some days, I am so high on the life I am creating that my heart feels as if it will burst. I live in Leavenworth, a beautiful mountain town in the North Cascades, chock full of clear, cold rivers, pine-scented trails, and an amazing community that I’m beginning to feel a deep connection to. On other days, my insecurities rear their ugly heads and I am laid flat by the fear that I will never be enough – thin enough, confident enough, financially stable enough, capable enough, well enough – to accomplish anything ever again.

Yes, I know, it sounds drastic. It is what I refer to as black and white thinking: the idea that life and its experiences are good or bad, happy or sad, this or that, when really they are all of those pieces, all at once. It’s tough to grasp sometimes; tough to be ok with. I find myself fighting within myself, struggling to find a theme, a meaning, and a single way to see the world that will make sense, not just today but all days in a row – I want to figure it out once and never worry about it again.

Of course, those are the days that I am afraid of the mystery that on others days I welcome and seek out – the days that I remind myself that I love surprises, and that the best things that have ever come to me were the ones I never could have predicted or expected. Those are the days that I am not wondering whether I am enough, and am instead find myself completely satisfied with what is instead of what will be.
 

For the first time in a long time, I have found myself craving the option to discharge these fears in a post to you, invisible audience. There is still something about the process of aligning black symbols together in neat rows on a white background and launching them out into cyberspace that eases the fear a bit. Although I certainly haven’t put down writing completely in the last two years, I have missed this specific outlet for my thoughts – I have missed you, and the writer/reader relationship we have.

So here I am, seeking my own enough-ness with a crowd of invisible folk who live out in cyberland. And here you are, taking it in as I test out the waters once again.

Love and plenty of kisses,

Morgan