Taking Up Space

A couple of weeks ago I bought a box of Kleenex. Not a knock-off version, not the small box, but a big ol’ box of name-brand Kleenex. You would think that this is hardly worth mentioning, but it has become a symbol of sorts in a drastic shift in perception that I’m still trying to wrap my head around.

I can’t even tell you the last time I bought a box of Kleenex, because ever since I have had control of my own finances I have chosen to skimp and save – why buy Kleenex when toilet paper works just as well? You’re just going to blow your nose into it – or, especially recently, sob into it – then throw it away.

For that matter, why buy half the shit that people do? Nice lotions, hand soaps, aluminum foil, good knives, new shoes, jeans that fit, bras that enhance rather than just suspend breast flesh?

All of these are things that I have denied myself in the past. I can still tell you how much money I spent on Victoria’s Secret bras when I finally broke down and bought a bunch. I feel better when I wear them, but some part of me can still take that amount of money – $200 – and turn it into how long I could have eaten on that same amount, or how many nights in a hostel it would have bought me. To some extent the ability to be a spendthrift is helpful, especially for stretching funds to live longer abroad, but there’s also a point where enough is enough.

Invisible audience, enough is enough.

My dad loved his work as an orchardist, but the orchard never did much more than break even, so when we tore out the trees – still one of the most heart-breaking days of my life – he considered himself a failure, despite years of patient and diligent work and hundreds of bins of beautiful fruit, not to mention the happiness it brought to him to do his life’s purpose. My mom, on the other hand, is an incredible nurse but was always in it for the paycheck – she used it to buy all the creature comforts any of us wanted, but would come home exhausted, spent and hating her job.

I thought that growing up with this difference in career strategies led me to fear seeking my dreams less than I would otherwise (taking my dad’s view) but I think that I internalized some pieces I wasn’t aware of until now. Now, looking at how much I have proudly denied myself in search of my dreams, I think that I learned that you either 1) made money or 2) followed your dreams. I learned that the two sides were mutually exclusive, and that perhaps the only way to know that I was really following my dream was to allow myself to suffer for that time and effort.

It stretches far beyond actual income, however. With this unconscious mindset, I have allowed myself to work for less than I have ever been worth; I have worked for others when some part of me knew it would not ultimately work to my benefit; and I have settled for less than I deserved in both the amount I earned and also the work I did. Some part of me embraced this as part of martyrdom: see how much I’m doing below my capabilities in the name of my dream? See how I’m suffering? See how I embody the starving artist? Because all artists must suffer, you see: it’s the only way to do it; there’s nothing to make art about if you aren’t suffering.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been sick. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been letting go of so much. Perhaps it’s because of all the soul searching I’ve been doing, but suddenly I have no more patience for denying myself.

I have suddenly realized that although there is pride choosing where I spend my money based on what I really want, it is actually detrimental to deny myself basic comforts and experiences just so I can claim that I live on $800 a month.

I deserve more than this, invisible audience. I deserve to live well, to believe in myself enough to keep searching not just for the type of writing that makes me feel alive, but also to find the way to make that fun, fulfilling and amazing life experience into my life’s work – work that will support me, too. This feels different than making a decision that I HAVE to make money off my writing and more about finding work that makes my heart sing AND brings me a paycheck. On top of that, it is finally deciding that I am WORTH the kind of money that will not just support me, but make me financially stable and comfortable, and living a lifestyle that may not necessarily cost a lot more, but will feel a lot less like denying myself for the bragging rights of living a small existence.

Does this make sense to anyone but me? I’m still trying to wrap my head around what I mean, but I guess that part of it is letting my talents sing instead of hiding them, waiting for someone to accidentally stumble across them. It means taking up the space I have always denied myself –letting go of the idea that I have to hide or apologize for being different, and also, once and for all, letting myself live as largely as I deserve. This isn’t necessarily about living in a mansion, but it IS about being less apologetic for my differences, and embracing the lifestyle that I have nothing to apologize for, and in fact can be proud of. If I’m going to be proud of myself, it’s important for that to be reflected in how I act: buying the jeans that fit, wearing the bras that give me confidence, and wiping my nose with Kleenex, simply because I’m worth the extra effort, the extra time, and the extra money to do so.

Around the same time I bought the Kleenex, I started wearing earrings again. I started wearing my hair down. I got new tennis shoes. I took some effort in my appearance, because I realized that I felt better when I did it, and when I felt better, I acted like I was worth more. And if I act if I’m worth more, I am treated better, not necessarily because other people see me differently, but because I see me differently and in turn I demand what I deserve instead of being apologetic or trying to fade into the wallpaper.

There’s a quote that I keep seeing on Facebook. Of course I can’t find it now, but it basically says that you aren’t doing anyone any favors by playing it small. I guess that’s where I am now. It’s time to take up the space I deserve, and stop playing the humble martyr who gives away all she has in the name of some undefined ideal that she no longer subscribes to, especially since the original subscription was unconscious. Now that I’ve figured it out and given it a name, I can’t abide by the feeling or the lifestyle it has given me: one of self-deprecation, denial, and apology for the smart, sensitive and wonderful person I am. When I’ve seen it in others it’s made me impatient with them; it’s no wonder the same thing in me made me want to punish myself by denying me everything that I have ever been worth, both in terms of connection, intimacy, love, and basic creature comforts. No wonder, invisible audience, I have felt so diminished trying to hide myself.

Until now.

Love and living large kisses,
Morgan

Time: All We Have; All It Takes

 

Hello invisible audience,

I’ve been meaning to write, but the things I want to write about are all the same, and I don’t want to be accused (even by myself) of beating a dead horse. Nevertheless, you are invisible and I have been pondering quite a bit lately, and I find that there are a couple things that I need to get off my chest – again.

One: time. That precious little gem that is really all we have. The one thing that we bargain for, that we trade money for; that we use to buy possessions. How many hours of work is my car worth? How much of a day am I working to pay for my phone bill? How much of my precious commodity am I trading in now in the hopes that the money I make will support my leisure time in the future?

That leads me to pondering number two: why do I worry so much about what others think about how I spend my time, or where? Even more important, why do I think others are even interested in how I spend my time? Yesterday I told my mom that I felt pressure to conform: pressure to want the things so many people seem to want, or already have: stability, 9-5 jobs, company-paid health insurance, houses, kids. “But, you don’t want that,” she said, looking at me with a puzzled frown.

It’s true! I don’t! So why the heck am I constantly berating myself for not wanting these things? It is related to another one of Mom’s statements. “I hope someday you find somewhere that you really like and want to settle down and stay there.” I wanted to hang my head in shame, not because she said it, but because I constantly catch myself thinking the same thing. Yes, that would be great. It would be great if I wanted to stay in one place. It would be great if I wanted a life that was readily accessible to me without any sort of social clash. If I could convince myself despite what my soul is shouting at me, what I am yearning for, that my happiness is found in a house with a yard and a job with x amount of weeks of vacation a year and a benefits package, I WOULD HAVE IT ALREADY. I can’t. Each time I get settled into that groove, I feel more unstable than when I have no idea where I’m going next. I feel hemmed in, fenced in, terrified and depressed. I feel less alive.

I’ve been reading a book that makes me feel guilty about this. You can change, it tells me. Any time that you say you can’t do something, you’re subscribing to your own limited behavior. Except I’m not. I’m trying to buck a deep trend, and move on. I’m trying to let go of a lifetime’s worth of shoulds and have to’s and live authentically, just for me. And God damn it, it’s harder than it looks.

In the soul searching I did this summer, I realized first that I had been listening to a lot of what I thought other people wanted or expected of me. Not even what they said out loud, but what I thought they wanted me to be. This was a big step, but the bigger and scarier one was when I realized that I had been welcoming these impressions, because I could use them as excuses. I kept trying to fit myself in the box because it was easier to complain about how I felt different from inside of it. I have tried to live a life of responsibility and fun based on other peoples’ definitions because it was easier than having to admit that I found nothing they did fun or rewarding. And that leads me to horse-beaten point number three: I got myself here.

And just like I got myself here, I am the one that can get myself out. Over-stated point four: I have to choose to be authentically me, not just once, but over and over (and over and over) again. No one can do this for me. No one else is going to come to my rescue and tell others what I want and need. The only way to meet like-minded people is to continue living and know that my lifestyle will lead me to them. They’re not in the box, so why do I keep looking for them there?  Not only that, but why am I focusing on people in the box when I have so many more friends that are bucking the trend in their own way?

There’s really only one answer: time. I am going over the same things in my head and revisiting the same mental real estate because these realizations are still new and they haven’t quite sunk in yet. I am still in the phase where I am unsure about what I’m saying, no matter how good it feels. At one time I didn’t know anything about writing a recipe; now I could teach a class about it if I wanted to. In between then and now, however, time passed, I learned some things, and I gained the necessary experience to feel confident that I know what I’m talking about. I’ll get there with these poor dead-horse points, too, invisible audience. All it takes is time.

Love and time-filled kisses,

Morgan

P.S. No horses -- dead or alive -- were beaten in the writing of this post.

What I Learned from Eat, Pray, Love

I have just picked up Eat, Pray, Love for the second time. I have to admit to having a platonic crush on Elizabeth Gilbert – I think if I met her in person we would get along smashingly. When I first read her book about three years ago, it was because someone pressed it into my hands and told me I should read it. Funnily enough, I can’t remember why they said I should read it, because at that point they had no idea that I liked to write or perhaps even that I liked to travel. Anyway, this person gave me her book, and I devoured it as if I had been given food for the first time in weeks. At that point, I was deep into a job that was supposed to make me happy because it was a career and was making me money, but I was miserable without really being able to put my finger on why. Reading Eat, Pray, Love reminded me of the things I had tried to tuck away and forget about because they weren’t considered particularly mature or grown up by the people around me. At that time, my friends were starting to buy houses and settle into long-term jobs, and I was trying to convince myself that this was what I really wanted, too, despite the fact that nothing on earth made me happier than stepping off a plane in a foreign country and knowing I had more than the typically allotted two-week vacation time to spend there.
I had tried to forget this very essential part of myself, but reading Gilbert’s book made my feet itch and my backpack call to me from deep within my closet. When I finished the book, I went back to the woman who had given it to me and said, rather pompously, “I could have written this.”
Well, that’s a lie.
I could not have written Eat, Pray, Love for one simple reason: I had given up on my dream. At that point in my life, I couldn’t imagine life without a corporate insurance benefit package, or without a steady income. Most importantly, at that point in my life, I couldn’t have said, as she did, “Well, I’ve just emerged from a crippling divorce and badly terminated love affair, and I am undoubtedly deeply depressed. I’ve written books about others and made money doing it, but right now, despite the fact that my life is in shambles around me, I am going to walk up to my publisher and tell them that they should give me an advance to write a book about my travels through three different countries that have nothing in common except that I want to go to all of them. Not only that, but I’m known as writing about men’s issues, and this one is just going to be about me, and what I am experiencing – it probably won’t have anything to do with anyone else at all, and no one would take it with them traveling to help them decide where to stay or eat.”
Reading her book again, I am immediately struck by the courage and audacity of what Gilbert decided to do, not because she wanted to do it, but because she convinced someone to pay her to do it. I think three years ago I probably just thought that some people got all the luck, but now I see something much deeper and more admirable in what she did: she went for it, without any idea of how well it would work.
Perhaps because now I’m in a similar situation, I can appreciate what she did more than I could then. At that point, I arrogantly thought that I could do what she did, if only I had the resources she had. Now, however, I know what stepping off that ledge feels like, and I admire her all the more for having stepped so boldly into the thin air.
If you think it would be easy, think about all the things you would have to change to make it happen: getting out of a mortgage, quitting your job, selling your car, paying your health insurance out of pocket, living on next to nothing out of a suitcase with no idea what you would do or where you would live when you got home a year later. Think about all the things you do every day that you would have to give up – dinners and drinks with friends, buying clothes – and all the ideas you would have to rearrange. Think of the terror of promising a book to a publisher without being sure you could write one, or that anyone would want to read it. Think of the idea of deciding before you even left that you would have to bare your soul to the world in exchange for the money you got, and hoping you had enough of a soul to bare.
Now I know that I never could have written Gilbert’s book, -- it was hers and her life experience, after all -- but I am incredibly glad that she did. Reading Eat, Pray, Love was one of first small steps that it took to start to change my ideas about my existence. It made me think that perhaps, if I believed in myself enough and refused to give up, I could create the life of my dreams, instead of trying to squash someone else’s idea of happiness into my life box. I am grateful for what I’ve learned from her, and what I am still realizing: nothing is impossible if you get out of the way and let it happen.

Love and not-so-impossible kisses,
Morgan

Finding What You Aren't Looking For

“Help,” I felt like saying as he rambled on, “I need your help.”
Instead, I sat and listened as he quoted home prices.
“The houses across the street are nice, and they cost a little more – two twelve, maybe two fifteen.”
As Brad inhaled his Marlboro Red, I stifled my words. I realized that he didn’t’ want to talk about it – what I wanted to talk about. He wasn’t interested in what I wanted to say; that I was afraid, felt alone, had taken an entire road trip based on the idea that that there was hope out there somewhere for me, if I could only find it. What did my hope look like? I think I imagined it to be an old friend telling me that he was impressed with where I had been and what I had done. Maybe, just maybe, I was looking for some reassurance that my life had not been wasted traipsing all over the world instead of aiming for the normal route – job, husband, family, in that order.
Instead, I found Brad, eight years after I first met him in Spain, with a 24-year-old wife and a two-and-a-half-year-old son who screamed for attention and was constantly praised for being a good boy.
Whatever I was looking for, it wasn’t this. It wasn’t suburbia, with a house in a development with 500+ homes in seven different styles. It wasn’t living in the middle of Montana, making a lot of money but having no friends and moving around every six months following the promotions. Whatever hope I was looking for, it wasn’t here.
What was here was my past. Even that had been marred.
“Man, I didn’t imagine you to be the one who would keep traveling,” Brad said when I first arrived. His pretty blonde wife was chasing their son around in the other room. Considering they had a two-year-old, the place was clean and well decorated.
“Oh yeah?” I asked, “What did you think I would do?”
“I don’t know…get your masters in writing or something.”
“Ah.” I paused, stuck at what to say. “Who did you think would do the traveling, then?”
Brad thought it over.
“I don’t know,” he said, “It wasn’t going to be Mary…not Tim…I guess I would have said me, at that point. I might have done it – gotten myself lost in South America or Africa or somewhere, if I hadn’t met Ashley.”
There it was. Suddenly he’d lost me.
If I hadn’t met Ashley.
A boyfriend once asked me – assumed of me, in fact – whether I would stop traveling when we got married. Perhaps I haven’t found that sort of love yet. Perhaps this is naïve of me, but damn it if I hope I never find that kind of love.
Brad made me feel like I could have made something more of myself if I had only gone to get more schooling. Perhaps, maybe, I could have had a different life if I had only chosen differently. But you know what? I didn’t choose differently. I chose to run across the world every chance I got, take every opportunity offered to me, and do my best to live it up while I could. Yes, I’ve gotten to the point where I see nominations of currency in the amount of days it could sustain me in a foreign country, but I will carry those memories with me and with more pride for a damn sight longer than Brad remembers his first house. Have your prerogatives, but don’t make them mine.
The happiest I’ve ever felt was on the open road with the window down and my foot on the gas; on the edge of a mountain with the clouds below me and the sun beating down; naked in a river with only the sounds of the water in my ears; surfacing from a night dive on the Great Barrier Reef with my breath as my only company. Is there something wrong with me because these moments were alone? Maybe. Do I give a shit? Not at all.


Love and fed up kisses
Morgan