The Ugly Truth & Pretty Lies Of 25

I’ve had multiple people ask me when I am going to share more in depth about my time overseas. After all, spending four months in Russia and Turkey, navigating two entirely different cultures, languages, more plot twists than one could even count, and adapting to do life as a local would – at least as much as possible – is not for the faint of heart. In fact, I have a post drafted with an entire gallery and partial word shpill, but my heart is in a far different place today. This is my first time engaging on social media in about a month. And my, what a whirlwind of a year it has already been.

You see, I could sit here, type some happy go lucky words, share some epic landscapes and portraits from my time living overseas, and pretend I’m taking on life like a champ. I could tell you a bunch of adventurous stories, triumphs, incredible religious conversation between Muslims and Christ followers, and give the words and thoughts that have been anticipated.

But today, I am not okay.

Actually, I have felt far from okay since December. I am naturally a go getter and upbeat and hopeful person, and my posts often reflect that. I really do try to be authentic with my word shpills on social media, which includes 1) The good 2) The bad 3) The ugly. What can I say? Enneagram 4s are described as accepting everything “warts and all”. 🙂 Sometimes though, I think people only read bits and pieces (or nothing at all), see my little squares of moments frozen in time, and think, “Ah yeah; she’s living her #BestLife.”

While there are a plethora of things I hope to share at some point about Russia and Turkey, I need to write on behalf of where my heart is actually at tonight.

You see…

After an overseas endeavor, people often talk about the highest of highs and amazing things that happened. This is natural and not inherently a bad thing. But there is a whole lot no one really talks about. No one talks about reverse culture shock and re-adaption to the American normal. No one talks about how “home” suddenly feels like a lot of different places. No one talks about how painful it feels to up and fly 5000ish miles away again and say “Goodbye” to those who feel like brothers and sisters. No one talks about how you will sometimes miss not being able to understand what everyone is saying (and your first stop in the USA being New Jersey’s hustle bustle airport…where you can, in fact, understand everrrrything everyone is saying). No one talks about how disoriented and even out of place you will feel the first month after returning. And no one talks about how it is indeed possible to sorely miss one place, appreciate the current, and simultaneously go back and forth between itching to uproot again and also finding sweet relief in normalcy. No one talks about the 25 year old crisis you will have over your entire life upon returning.

At 25 years old, and I can say that an unpacked suitcase often feels most like home to me. And at 25 years old, I am here to tell you that womanhood is not always the picture perfect idea we hear about when societal pressures tell us to grow up, get a job, and be an #IndependentWoman.

Bags, bags, and more bags.

That has been my life the last 4 years. One new place, only to move to another, only to move to another. I lived in 5 different apartments/homes during my whopping 2ish years in Los Angeles, half lived out of my car at one point, moved back to North Carolina, back to Los Angeles, back to North Carolina, then to Russia, then to Turkey, and now back to the USA (for now;)). Bags quickly became a normal way of life for me. I became so accustomed to repacking and uprooting and replanting that I never cared to even furnish my rooms in Los Angeles. At one point, I slept on an air mattress for 4 months, used a suitcase as storage, and two salt lamps in the floor as the accent piece.

One night, I laid awake in the wee hours of morning, and took it upon myself to pack the few things I did actually unpack, and packed my car full the next day. Granted, this was out of desperation (and preparation) to flee a rather scary roommate situation, but nonetheless, the bag theme continued.

In Russia, I finally brought myself to unpacking (after already staying in a home prior) in our new apartment. I carefully organized and stored everything into my little soviet style wardrobe, dusted off my coats, and felt at peace. For once, somewhere started to feel like home.

A week later, I found myself repacking for an emergency country swap to Turkey. I dumped all my bags in the floor and just stared at them. I won’t do it. My roommates, the “twinners”, insisted I unpack. After all, it would feel more like home! But…but…”home” to me felt like a suitcase. Something in me couldn’t do it. There’s no point. I’m just going to repack again. For two weeks, I dug things out of my suitcase as needed and did not touch the rest.

Finally, I caved and unpacked. In December, after flying several thousand miles back to the USA, I found myself in that same deja vu. And here I sit this eve, the shadow of another (partially) packed bag on my closet door.

My life looks absolutely nothing like I ever though it would.

Bags were never my idea of something that seemed like home.

When we are young, we’re told to fit the social norms and convinced crazy things like womanhood will be the ultimate Holy grail to life. As a child, I often envisioned what I would be doing, look like, and feel like in womanhood. I saw a glamorous young woman with confidence, a promising career, probably a suburban husband, and a chest worthy of a bra (hey puberty, I’m looking at you…er…for you). In my young eyes, womanhood was the golden ticket to Hollywood. Freedom, zeal, and confidence were guaranteed and money definitely grew on trees. In high school, I couldn’t wait to grow up. I couldn’t wait to have the body of a woman. And I couldn’t wait for the packaged benefits it included, like knowing what you’re doing with your life, for example, success, and doing all the womanly things women do.

But just like no one tells you the adverse effects of swapping one’s homeland for overseas and then vice versa…no one tells you the sometimes ugly truth about being a young woman.

I didn’t know that womanhood, for me, would be mending not one, not two, but three broken hearts within three years. I didn’t know that you could grieve the living as much as the dead, and I didn’t know that death itself could happen in ways besides taking a last breath. I didn’t know it was entirely possible to be loved and then unloved; embraced and then discarded. I used to be afraid of being alone in the dark, and now I’m afraid of being alone in my thoughts. Pain used to be a scraped knee or blister from new shoes, and now pain is a condition of the heart.

I used to envision myself as a young woman with some roots – a place of my own to call “Home” – and now I realize I feel more at home with a packed bag; rootless.

Life gets pretty weird as you grow.

It feels a bit like a handful of expectations and dreams, at least half of them plucked right out, and even voluntarily discarding some yourself. What’s even weirder is seeing kids – er, young adults – you used to babysit suddenly married. And birthing actual human beings. And raising said human beings to be functional human beings. It’s a crazy concept to do life with girlfriends, and POOF! They have a husband. A sex life. Body parts that are actually capable of lactating. A mortgage and a 10 year plan. All the freaky things. All the foreign things to the rootless bag packing repacker who secretly wishes to someday unpack.

I wouldn’t take back these last 8 years of legal, governmentally dubbed “adulthood” for anything. Not my time in Los Angeles, Russia, Turkey, North Carolina and my small town here. Not my (not so) love life and epically failed relationships and disgustingly painful seasons where I thought, This will be the time where I am overcome and lose all control and end up in a psych ward. I am thankful for the people and places and experiences and the anti status quo way of life. Somedays I feel accomplished and worthy of enjoying my 20s. But, if I am honest..

Most days, I hate my twenties

I just told someone that a few days ago. The adventurous, go getter, jump from to and fro while miraculously paying the bills and boring, blah, fixed expenses ignites my soul. But I also crave security (shhh; don’t tell anyone) and a sense of consistency. Twenties are fun, but man, they are rough too. It’s this blend of mistakes, (utter) failures, triumphs, tiny victories, figuring out the who and the where and the why, falling in love, falling out of love, being dumped, being the dumper, trying new things, royally screwing up said new things, wondering if that dress makes you look fat, grabbing life by the flipping horns, flipping horns slipping out of your grip, all the while trying to function in an adult body trying to defy the status quo and societal pressures and being wise and responsible and purposeful and grow a savings account…all at the same time. Simple enough task, right?

“Thirty and flirty and thriving…”

Ok; but not really. Early 2k Jennifer Garner just fits the angsty 20 something thoughts like a glove.

My heart’s desire for 2022 is to figure out who all is running my same race, throw on my shoes, and jump in there with them. I wish for roots, but I think I wish for the kind of roots that is rooted in people more than a place. What that looks like, I don’t quite know. What I do know – although I may hate my twenties and feel a bit alienated by my own thought process – is that we are not promised tomorrow or the things marked on the calendar. We can wait and overthink and hold out for the perfect moment.

Or, we can take flight and dig into the beauty of life. Sometimes that beauty is birthed from pain, but perhaps pain is what makes it so beautiful.

Rootless bag holders unite. 😉