On Memory, Inevitability, and Healing from Wounds You Didn't Know You Had

(Consider this a warning, both for the length of this post, and for triggering material)

If I could go back in time, there are not many things I'd change.  Mostly because you can't know how little changes might affect you, and in making changes to my past, I'd be killing myself.  Which is all nonsense, as every time I see sci-fi shows where someone is faced with helping the heroes put back the past, they struggle with the knowledge that they will kill themselves in the process, and I think, "Well that's dumb.  Don't they know it's better this way?"  But that's not the point.  Better or not, at the end, you become a new person, and whoever you would have become down that alternate timeline, whether they liked themselves or not, whether they were a good person or not, they are dead.  Chances are, it was not so straightforward - everyone is a mix of good and bad, everyone likes and dislikes themselves or part of themselves at times.  Maybe weathering this battle made them better and stronger, and although the whole world is better because the battle never happened, something will be missing from this version of that one person.  They are dead.
If I could go back in time, I've said before that there were things about my wedding I would change.  Certain things that I had fixed in my head that were unnecessary, because at the time, I was a staunch traditionalist.  I still am, in my way.  I debated for a long time whether to have my mom or my step-dad walk me down the aisle.  My mom has been there for me forever.  She's always been my primary parent.  At the same time, my step-dad and I had formed a close bond, and he had been my dad for 20 years.  I chose him, in my own way symbolically adopting him.  I chose him.
When he walked me down the aisle, he was already cheating on my mom.  He was already in the process of ruining everything.  When it all came out, the world fell down around my ears - the narratives I'd built up about second chances, about religious conversion, about all kinds of things.  For those reasons, I would go back and not choose him.  For a while, I thought I should have chosen my mom.  Now, I think, I would choose no one.

Once Upon a Time, My Life

I really should have known that adjusting to a new position would hinder my ability to write as often as I'd like.  However, I'm getting better at the job and just adjusting in general - not that the job is that hard or that stressful, just that things need adjusted to, I guess, so I've been coming home for 3 months with no desire to cook or write or interact with humans or do anything other than watch tv or play video games.  And that's ok.
I sometimes worry that being ok with my own laziness will carry me away.  My mom always complains that I'm not "ambitious," but I do like to always be looking for that "next thing" - graduated HS, next is college; out of college, next is job; have husband, next is baby; have job, next is promotion; have degree, next is grad school - and on and on ad infinitum.  It is so. gorram. hard. for me to just enjoy life at the point it is now.  It's partially Adventure! and partially Anxiety! and partially Boredom! - no, wait, just boredom.  Stillness is not in my nature.  So to sit and chill seems like a great concession for me.
At the same time, movement for the sake of movement hardly counts as anything.  That's what I feel like I'm doing.  The next thing, the next thing, the next thing - what is that thing?  Doesn't matter.  It's Next.  New.  Different.  Sometimes I feel like a hamster on a wheel.  And when a hamster climbs off the wheel and chills with his water bottle in his little blue plastic hut, has he deserved his rest?
IDK, MAN!
I fear that I am too careful with myself.  Since finding out about my mental illness, since I started getting migraines, I give myself permission to rest.  I let myself rely on Husband for things that stress me out (like leaving the house - I go to work, I come home.  He does the shopping, he runs the errands, etc.).  I give myself permission to flake out on plans when having friends is just too much for me.  It's true that I have some conditions, and it's true that I work hard, and it's true that I have been perhaps too self-reliant for too long, but I worry that if I give myself enough leeway, I'll collapse into a pile of useless mush or something.  (That happens to people, right?)
THEN AGAIN, I got a new job, then a year later, got a promotion.  I'm only 3 months in.  I'm just now getting to the point of comfortableness, and I'm coming back out of my shell a little.  Adjustment is hard, and it's been a busy year-or-so for adjustments.  Maybe I need to lay off myself.

Anyway, here's my latest slew of quarter-life crises for your enjoyment:

On "Encouragement"

Hi,

I am a member of the Bd. of Elders at GS [that's my church. Don't worry, it took me a second, too] and want to encourage you to take advantage of the blessings to worship and commune at GS. Our records show that Linfalas last attended church on 4/5/15 and last communed on 9/14/14. Husband last attended GS on 5/31/15 and last communed on 5/10/15. There may be a mistake in our records but this is what they show.

Both of you know how important it is to stay close to your Savior. He has done great things for all of us and we are forever grateful. Attending church and communing regularly is clearly a way of demonstrating our love and thankfulness and is a fruit of our faith. This Sunday we will celebrate the Lord's Supper at all of our services. Please make an effort to attend Sunday or in the very near future.

May God bless you.
[NAME REDACTED]

Recipe Post: Random-Shit-I-Found-in-My-House Soup...Mmm!

Oh man, you guys.  I am a mad genius.

Growing up, I was always amazed by my mom's ability to throw some random leftovers together and make something more delicious out of them.  She's  mad wizard - Fact.  I've been getting better at this skill since I've been cooking regularly (even though I almost always cook using some kind of recipe template because I love to explore - but leftovers are a different business.)

So anyway, I was always jealous, but I no longer need to be.  I just made the best soup.  (Though, lesbianest, soup is hard to fuck up.  Sshhh.)  However, since I'm a storyteller, let me guide you through the process of mad science:

Step 1: Realize that your husband is too lazy to tear chunks of fully-cooked chicken off the carcass to stuff into his face, and therefor your leftover roast chicken will just never get eaten if you don't step in.  Decide to make soup out of it, even though Husband doesn't like soup, because you're hungry and lazy.

On Art and Universality

Ugh, my life.

You'd think that for how busy I've kept myself for the last 7 years, doing ONLY ONE THING would just be so relaxing and time would float by like a pea blossom borne aloft on a summer's breeze.  Actual fact: Despite not being in school and despite not planning a wedding and despite not renovating a house and despite only working full-time, I feel like this past year has flown by with preternatural speed.  TIME, man.  It keeps HAPPENING.
As a result, there are quite a few people that I just haven't gotten around to seeing all year, and I finally cracked and broke my "post a blog post at least once a month please, slacker," routine.
I'm still plugging away at grad school research and whatnot, which is an anxiety attack for another day.  I'm also still seeking a new church, which is just so much harder than I thought it was going to be.  (That's not to say that I'm going back.  I'm never going back.)
Today, I want to talk about ART again, because I've had further thoughts.

Can We All Just Calm Down for a Second?

I'm really happy right now.  I've been feeling good for a couple weeks. Good enough, in fact, that my brain is trying to find ways to sabotage my happiness, because it knows that for every happy moment I steal, there's hell to pay later.  The devil gets his due.

SHUT UP, BRAIN and let me be happy.  So that's something I'm working on.  (I'm now going to update y'all on my life now, but the real meat of the post is farther down, in case you want to skip it.  Or whatever.  I don't tell you what to do.)

I'm really enjoying my job.  It's only-just-above-minimum-wage at Starbucks, but I'm getting 2 raises in the coming months (one for being there 6 months and one because everybody at Starbucks is getting a raise in January - people are rumbling about raising the minimum wage, so I imagine they're trying to get ahead of that so it's not such a blow when it does happen.  Good for them.  Good for me).  I think that some of the enjoyment comes from just being an employee again - I know exactly what is expected of me at all times, there are no ambiguous social situations to navigate, and I don't have to be in charge of anyone.  It's much less stressful.  

My last job pretty much required a codependent attitude in order to survive.  I was basically on-call every day - if they needed help, I was the only person who could come in.  It's kind of nice to be so desperately needed, but you can never really relax when you know that a call could come in at any hour and you'd be needed - and you can't really say no.  Part of this is because we were such a small unit that we couldn't really afford to hire any more people, part of it was some issues with "upper management."  But seriously - I'm not an EMT, I was working in a college cafeteria.  Ain't nobody got time to cut years off their life with the stress from that bull.  Beyond that, I feel like there was so much time there when I wasn't sure what was expected of me moment to moment, and we didn't get regular reviews, so it was hard to tell if you were doing good, bad, or indifferent.  You were fine until suddenly everything you did was terrible, then you'd get ignored for another 5 months.  It was weird, and stressful, again, to never know when the hammer would come down.  So between that and being "on-call," just every minute of on and off time was filled with anxiety.  Yuck.

Starbucks is working out great so far.  I can ask for days off!  I work with only nice people (who can ever say that?  Me!  Right now!)  I am good at this stuff.  I can relax when I'm home - be home at home and work at work.  Plus, free lattes ;)  And tips!  And healthcare!  

But anyway, the point of this post right now is to talk about my "biological clock" and how it needs to shut itself right the hell up.  (Not a Sparrow Falls...you might not want to proceed).

One of the great fears among a life of great fears...

"One of the great fears among a life of great fears, perhaps the last great fear is the fear of being no longer useful. We find a role in life, and we do that role to the best of our ability for as long as that ability is there. But all of us — even me, dear listeners — will someday hit a point where we no longer are able to do that thing that we define ourselves by doing. And more than the fear of injury, more than the fear of death, this is the fear that looms. The loss of self. The self that is self we imagined we were our whole lives. But we were never that self, not really. We were only a series of selves, living one role and then leaving it for another. And all the time convincing ourselves that there was no change. That we were always the same person, living the same life. One arc to a finish, not the stutter-stop improvisation that is our actual lives.
Worry less about the person you once were. Or the person you dream you someday will be. Worry about the person you are now. Or don’t even worry! Just be that person. Be the best version of that person you can be. Be a better version than any of the other versions in any of the many parallel universes. Check regularly online to see the rankings."
--Cecil Baldwin, Welcome to Nightvale

That's all for today, just that quote. Because I found, when I listened to this episode, that I needed it. Here it is, in case I need it again. Here it is, in case you need it, now and again.