When your expectations are not your reality

(Draft reposted from 2019)

Ever seen the film, 500 Days of Summer?

I love it. Its conclusion is the kind that leaves you feeling like you’ve been both sucker punched in the gut, but also (if you so choose to adopt the marvelous beauty of the nitty gritty;)) thinking, “WOW. That kind of felt like real life.” There is one scene in particular – I mean, just take a glance above! – that was my, “Oh my MOLY, this is the pain of reality and how life really works!” moment. As a realist who has a crazy deep love/hate relationship for depressive endings of films, I made the mistake of suggesting this movie to watch with a guy I was dating and his family. The plot twist unfolded and intensified into utter despair and depressive ending vibes. “….And you said this was your favorite movie, Anna?” his dad inquired skeptically. 😂

I’m a dreamer, but like I said above, I also am a realist…and probably more so than anything. I see things how they are, say things like they are, and appreciate people who don’t beat around the bush when advising something, confronting something, or suggesting something. I love dreaming, but only if I can make them attainable, something tangible, something that I could definitely see myself accomplishing in real life. If someone has bad news to share, I want the full truth of it; someone to just say it like it is. But you see – although I might be a realist, that doesn’t magically equate to the pain of reality suddenly not feeling…well…painful.

These past 2 years, I have realized more than anything that life does not, in fact, shape out to be how we humanly envision. Some pieces, perhaps. But the fairytale endings, the picture perfect lifestyle, the 9-5 days consisting of green juice and the sculpted bod and the perfect sleep cycle, perfect family, perfect job, perfect, smiling “positive vibes” aura we see on Instagram…I find that they come in occasional pockets of joy to compliment life; but they are not life in its entirety. They are less like the idolized, unattainable versions that we fantasize, and more like Ecclesiastes (seriously; go read it) in its entirety. 

My life in Los Angeles is more different than I ever would have imagined.

I had a lot of things I “thought” would happen. Boy, did I have my mental timeline down to a science. My expectations were happiness, success, a strong bond with a community of people, the same sense of freedom and joy as when I visited, amazing networking opportunities, fruition in my dreams and ambitions, and looking the part of the successful, well equipped little Los Angeleno, complete in giant sunglasses, some type of weird shoe, and kombucha in hand. Livin’ it up.

It’s been a humbling experience. I’ve cried myself to sleep, walked out of auditions ripping the sheet music in half, gone through the motions of day to day survival, taking a deep breath before the hour-ish commute, and have found the mental depiction of myself that was once the savvy girl walking around town with the organic crunchy mama kombucha stuff, to have way too many days of stress under eating, living off of granola bars, cutting my own hair that LA’s chemically water damaged because the salon was too expensive, and cursing the darkness, wallowing in self pity, and wallowing in a really, really deep loneliness and depression.

I think – actually, I know – many, if not most other humans have experienced this same thing. So what do you do when life sucks, you’re more full from sorrow than food, and you want to run away and just say, “F*ck it,” (sorry; real talk here)  altogether? Do you let yourself wallow away, curse the darkness looming around you, and allow the pain to devour and suck the life out of you?

Or do you stay.

I hate to stay. It doesn’t come naturally, and I am quick to flee when life presents an array of things that I cannot humanly carry. I hate enduring life when the pain and emotions are too big for me to really even describe. I want the end goal and the fruition that I know I have in me to obtain, but I often find myself getting lost in the dark. I know that the good to come is indeed possible, but the endurance and suffering portions hurt.

Suffer.

That’s a word I don’t like to experience, but a word that we all, indeed, experience in different forms at different times. I’d prefer to tune out the bad parts, take an essential oil bath, and call it a day. But you know what?  It is in those uncomfortable seasons of endurance that sharpen and refine us; where we indeed begin to overcome the things we once thought were sheer agony to obtain, or even impossible. I’ve found that the Enemy thrives off of feeding our appetites of apathy and numbness to things that once brought us joy during these times. When I feel distant from God, and it feels like I am praying to air or a spiritual realm selectively tuning me out, my human nature is to drop everything cold turkey. I stop eating. Running. Cooking. Thinking clearly. Writing. Reading. Sleeping. Creating. All of the things that spark joy and make me feel alive and close to the Creator – suddenly diminish. It feels like the weight of my anxiety or depression and the fight-or-flight mode that feels like I’m running on autopilot are consuming me.

And that’s when the challenge rises: When your expectations are NOT your reality…do you curse the darkness and run away, or do you press in and learn to suffer?

Maybe that means taking the initiative to clean up the mess. Maybe it is waiting and enduring the painful season, but knowing that things just need to unfold in their timing. 

 I do not think this means wallowing in the same spot where the darkness seems to encircle us. Often times, I believe that we are responsible for proactively choosing to find a way out of the mess, while also fully believing that whatever is happening to us does not own us. I think that we can press in and suffer, because while it is uncomfortable and really gritty, it also is refining. And we need not run away. For me, “running away” usually looks like numbing or occupying myself with other things in life, while equally tuning out the mess and pretending it’s not there.

A few years ago, I spilled a blueberry smoothie on my white carpet. I was so taken aback by how much spilled, that I literally just threw a towel on and couldn’t even look at it. It was on the floor, on the wall, all over my nightstand. It was blue, and it was…bad. The towel hid the smoothie quite well. But it was still there, nonetheless. I had 2 choices. 1) Let it sink in and begin to fester. 2) Acknowledge that it was still there, and take the beginning steps to clean it up. Even if I couldn’t magically scrub out every blue stain, I could do what was next. And so, I got towel, and I did what was next.

And so can we. So can you. So can I. 

Let’s press in; together.