ON FINDING A JOURNAL FROM 17

A journal entry from age 17. 

I sank to my knees. With each syllable, tears sprang to my eyes, so by the end the dam of emotion spilled over onto my cheeks, down my neck, cascading down my chest. Rivers of revealed devastation. 

 May 8, 2009

“Garrett (my brother) did very well at his track meet today, taking 1st in the long jump and the 400. I am so proud of him, he’s really starting to hit his stride. But I hate that I also can’t help to think about myself. I’m a failure. I’ve done nothing and it even feels like my horse training sucks and I’m not doing anything special with them. Garrett’s amazing at guitar, singing, track, cross country, has so many friends and girls always swooning over him, and I’m basically doing nothing. Once again, he’s the star and I’m just…his fan. I mean, what can I say I’ve done? I’m good at getting in car accidents and having surgeries and up-ending everyone’s lives and getting sick and causing trouble. Everyone has some kind of claim to fame in this family and compared to the rest of my siblings I’m just taking up useless space. I feel so gray, so boring and unachievable. I’m not jealous of Garrett, I just wish I had my own thing that I totally dominated, but it seems like everything I do and try is a losing battle, even with my horses it’s hard because of my injuries and I can’t stay consistent enough to get them to their potential. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just be that loser sibling who never actually does anything. I feel sad. I feel sorry for everyone putting up with me. I hate pity and I feel like everyone pities me right now. Like, “she’s the Wolle always getting hurt and going to doctors and troubling her family”. Probably being dramatic, but that’s how it feels. I wish I could see into the future.”

Every cell in my body held its breath. Each vein in my heart was ripped and shredded. I have always had a perfectionism streak, a weird juxtaposition of being the oldest twin and youngest duo of the family. Growing up with a range of interests, yet nothing felt like it was mine to own except my horses, that of course was marred by a car accident. I was so harsh and severe with myself. A baby and felt like a failure for supposedly not having dominated something. So much despair. My poor, sweet girl. To grab her face, pull her to this year. Sit her down and have a powerpoint presentation. Smooth the worry lines in her forehead that I still carry. Tell her to soften. I want to release her from the comparison and mental games, the dangerous thoughts that come and go and sometimes stay longer than is healthy. To release her from feeling like she has to fit in and belong anywhere, that we end up creating that belonging and sense of home wherever we go. 

And I think it’s so triggering, because in my heart there are new ways that I still believe those same things, right? How have the circumstances shifted but my thoughts have remained the same? When I turn 40, what will I think while perusing my journals from year, age 30? I do acknowledge that I am quite a bit wordier now, so I will probably be breathing through and going, “oh my god get to the point, but….wow”. I hope I don’t have as much blinding me, paralysis of decision making, a block meaning I’m unable to see the beauty and unique perspectives, forgetting to live in the moments while I have them. I fight for it every day, am better about it now, but in what ways am I still that 17 yr old? 

Therapy has garnered healing inner child wounds, however, it feels like we haven’t made it that far, as much as I’ve gone. Thinking of getting to age 17 seems daunting, even getting into my 20’s feels insurmountable when there is so much to work with early on. My other childhood journals are back at my parent’s house and honestly, I am so thankful for that. I might never have been able to find my way back from that rabbit hole. 

How do we heal these wounds within us? Some so subtle we forgot they were there, hidden beneath layers and layers of scar tissue, glossed over and forgotten because of more adult items and situations. Acknowledging, going back, holding yourself at that age, asking what you needed and giving it to them, looking around now and opening your eyes to how you still keep those patterns in play. What do you need to do to make changes, to release. 

What are some ways the 17 year old version of you is still active in your life? Do they come out in romantic relationships, work situations, friendships? Do you see yourself through their eyes, still as 17 and craving so much more? The teenage film covering all of the amazing things you have done and experienced? 

I saw this TikTok about saving a compliment from a boss for a “work folder” to use then when asking for a promotion. Now I think I have to start a “Badass Folder”, where I save pictures or texts or things that I’ve done, from cool friend hangs, adventures, to work stuff and trips, etc, for the bad days, the gray, to look through the folder and remind myself/us where we’ve been, what we’ve done.

Because, baby, look at us go. 

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine’s Day 🖤 whether you are in a relationship, single, middle ground purgatory or simply complicated (le sigh), I really hope you savor the day. I mean, every day, but this day is a good reset for remembering to do it on the daily.

As a romantic person who has had a closed door on romantic love for, well basically forever, I knew quickly, young, that if I wanted those experiences I would have to do them myself. Hopefully with a partner one day, but if I had waited for that specific relationship to do anything in my life, I wouldn’t be here.

That’s why you see me being ridiculous on a Tuesday lunch, a cocktail at night, elaborations instead of quick and convenient. Cigars outside for hours to let the mind wander to the vast galaxies in my mind. I want the seconds to last longer and moments to fill my body until it overflows. Make the table. Invite the friends. Take the trip. Buy yourself flowers. Hike to the waterfall. Chase the sun. Read for hours in bed and run the goddamn bath. Follow the pings, that intuition. Make and do the things for yourself that you want to do with someone.

Say the things to the people when you feel them. Be scared and let them in anyway. Lick the wounds and embroider the scar when your light reveals the shadows they’re not ready to work through. Love your community. Let them love you. As much as it makes you want to vomit, keep your bleeding, bruised, godforsaken heart open. Make your life the one you’ve always wanted to live. And love anyway

The Houses that Built You

I am writing this alone, in the woods, sitting upon the remains of a once warm and active hearth. A forgotten homestead, its walls non-existent, the only nod to days past is the outline of a foundation and the brick fireplace, along with what I am sure are active ghosts.

As I trace my footsteps along the perimeter of what once was, glimpses of what it had been keep rising to my conscious, filtering in with reality. It is here. It is here because someone had the dream and vision for it. It is here because someone took what they had and made it into a physical object. Now, due to circumstances or situations, bones remain where walls once stood, memories have been passed down through generations or maybe they too, have been laid to rest alongside their hosts.

But the courage to build it stays.

This made me think humans in terms of houses. The houses we build, friendships, projects, or own internal awareness, houses built for love, adventure, care, healing. The house we present today, as now, maybe it’s brand new, paint still drying, perfect lighting, shiny appliances. I like this house, am excited for you to walk me through it, giving me the guided tour of all the things learned and seen. Yet, I want to see more. Not the finished basement or the four car garage, I want to see the remnants of the houses that have burned to the ground, the ones you have abandoned in parts of town no one goes. Show me the shaky foundations or the walls you took sledgehammers and the beams that crashed when everything fell apart.

I want to see the charred remains of the houses you have been, the homes you have built for other people. Because the house you are building now? It will all make sense. Why you chose the oak over the cherry, the brass pulls instead of the silver. The fenced in yard versus the open back that butts up to the forest. To know you now means more when I know your past. I want to revel in the houses you can’t wait to show me, that you are so proud of, as well as the ones you left condemned.

I want people in my life who have started over and over again. Rebuilding over and over again what they thought they knew and becoming who they are meant to be.

I want to know a thousand structures of you.

Wild Wednesdays - Summer Flower Rolls

Part of Wild Wednesdays is the permission to try something new and guess what, you don’t even have to be good at it.

I’ve never made any kind of spring roll or egg roll, until I go through the process it can seem intimidating and then once the steps are strode though I usually wonder where it has been all my life (remember how LONG it took me to even try making a martini because the simplicity of it was mountainous in trepidation?!)

These Summer Flower Rolls are insanely easy, if you don’t have access to edible flower, ask around! Just make you know if they have been sprayed or not. For this recipe I used pansies, bachelor buttons and yarrow, with some garnish of the little white daisy ones that I wouldn’t recommend only because they are super bitter!

And, as you can see by the lack of my skills, they don’t have to be perfect or show worthy, they just have to make it from the plate to your mouth. Feel free to substitute with other things that you might have in your fridge or want to try!

Just do it.

Mamsie and Me

I feel the weight of having a Mother I love. I feel the weight because her age is now something that doesn’t seem to match her. I feel the weight because I do not live near  her so the making of memories is far and few between and I have begun to have anxiety that I won’t have enough stored by the time it is too late. I begin to feel a murmuring panic that I don’t have children who get to experience all that she has to offer at this age when she is still her own and in all transparency I feel a small vein of jealousy for my unborn children because of their cousins’ who get Mamsie in her glory days. I feel everything to the bone and I feel her, in ways difficult to express but churning just below the surface.

I feel the years of toil in her hands. Her strength in posture perfect back, watching her navigate life with an innate gracefulness I wish could be taught. The joy in her eyes when engaging with another human who was formerly a  stranger. The beauty she sees staring at a face wrought with more wrinkles than hers. The tiredness as she sinks into her bed and whispers a poem she wrote about such an action when I was 7.

I can hear her voice reading aloud or telling stories, instructing life lessons in what I thought was just an evening spent baking a pie. I feel the afternoons of trudging off the bus with tears streaming down my face because of a nonchalant insult that sliced more deeply than the deliverer even knew and her waiting with open arms and never ending advice of “stand up straight and ignore them…inner beauty shines through more than outer beauty…even if they are unkind to you, you need to be kind to them.”

I recall her silhouette, in that early pre-dawn getting ready for the day. Darkness flitted through my dreams so I was never one for sleep, her grace letting me wander through the jewelry boxes on her dresser, asking questions and being intrusive or sleeping in her bed in hopes my imagination would quiet and a few hours of rest could be had.

I can feel her gentleness with the spirits of everyone she has encountered, no human has withstood their own barriers in her presence and I shudder with shame the number of times my eyes rolled as she thanked an aging veteran or told another elderly woman she looks just like her mother. Her ease of laughter, that gasping, breathless laugh which eventually turns into a cry and I think makes her the most beautiful woman in the world.

Her faith is palpable because I can feel it; see it. Every morning on her knees, reading her Bible, tending to others, praying in those hushed moments when stillness emanates throughout the house. Her patience like a blanket, enfolding around me even as mine wears thin. 

Her curiosity is an experience shared, whether it was stopping by the side of a road to see what kind of flower was growing there or her allowing us to do “experiments” in the kitchen or try things we had never done without so much as a “it probably won’t work, or that will get messy.” Her penchant for cultivating and growing leaves of green also extending to the people around her. Her denial is sweet, but a resounding truth is that she has lived an intentional and brave life.

I yearn for and ache for her nurturing, the innate essence of Mother bestowed to anyone crossing her path. Human or animal, her ability to see beyond the shell that encases a spirit is grounding. The hierarchy in the animal kingdom made no impression on her as a snake deserved to be nursed back to life as much as a baby kitten or rabbit. Her hands brushing my hair and back as I need comforting, her body intuitively forming to mine for a hug that neither of us chooses to break.

Never one for demanding luxury she certainly has never received it and her grace in that acceptance is in itself humbling. The “make do” and “there are people who are living in worse conditions” mantras were always given a seat at our table, her defending that she will be in heaven one day and it all doesn’t matter. But sometimes it seems closer, in stolen moments and light that only those on the receiving end can see.  

What if I see glimpses of heaven now?

Photography by: Ashtin Paige - Nashville TN

http://www.ashtinpaige.com/