Feeling Roots Grow

It was Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining, but there was a little bit of wind that made one want a jacket. Alex and I were in the park with three other couples who we knew on varying levels of new friendships. The guys, myself, and one of the other women were tossing a frisbee around in often comic futility to the breeze and lack of practice. Soon the other woman playing frisbee dropped out to stand with the other two. The three of them started to take a walk around the park.

“Pst, Victoria!” I hear, as one of the women waves me over to join them on their stroll. I happily moved out of the frisbee circle and joined them, a feeling of beautiful, warm wanted-ness and friendship seeping into my soul.

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It was Monday night, and me and four other women sat in a half circle on the couch. We talked about how we all ended up in Midland, our engagement stories, shared pictures of our wedding dresses. We laughed at jokes. We got real with each other and teared up. We prayed for each other and encouraged each other. It was a salve of female companionship which I have so often craved and needed since moving. I left the prayer group with the feeling of shared burdens with shared comfort and support, glowing in the optimistic knowledge that this was just the beginning, and my relationships with these women is going to continue to deepen and grow.

The Year is Now 2020 and I’m 27 (An Overdue Year in Retrospect)

(Insert a probably overused “Hindsight is 2020” joke here)

As I was too busy recapping my Christmas visit to Montana when I usually do my annual reflection on the past year, I pushed it from New Years to my Birthday this time around. Partly, I think, because there’s an emotional tangle to unwind as I look back over the year and I’ve put it off a bit. Partly because time just ever so easily got away from me. Which might be why it’s already past my birthday and I still haven’t posted this. But anyway, time to dive in now.

My goal last year was that with all my life changes coming my way I’d find the strength and grace to rise to the challenge. Looking back, I don’t know if I’ve succeeded. I’ve had some rough days, where homesickness and struggles really got me down. I had a near two month long period at the end of Summer where I was almost continuously depressed with it. I still have days where it’s hard to shake myself into a positive attitude (thankfully those days have been fewer and less intense). And I look back and try to figure out what I could have done to fix it, what I can still do to keep myself in a better mindset about it, and I don’t have an answer to it. I don’t know that I failed because hindsight isn’t giving me a clearer idea as to how I could have done better. But it still frustrates me that I couldn’t have been better.

My husband was so supportive and never once made me feel like I shouldn’t or couldn’t be feeling that way. He held me tight on the nights I felt alone and helped me search for ways to make Midland better and just generally sympathized and comforted and supported me. I really don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been.

Dealing with sadness and struggles with another person in my life has been a learning curve that has taken time, too. How do I go through it without worrying and frustrating my husband or making him feel guilty for it? How does he empathize in my pain without himself being dragged into a sorrowful mood? How do I convey that I’m so very, very happy to be here and married to him and figuring out life with him, but some days I can’t help but miss very deeply the pieces of me that I left behind and the people that I love so dearly. What’s the balance to being honest with where I’m at emotionally and not trying to burden him with things? We’ve started to find a balance, in this and in many other married things. We’ve learned how to be a couple and live together and have our lives merge into one, and it’s been beautiful and fun.

Marriage has been so wonderful. It’s spending every day with my best friend – playing games, learning a routine, supporting each other, learning together, laughing together, crying together, traveling together… It’s having a frustrating day at work and just knowing you get to go home to someone who will snuggle you so tight and make you feel safe. It’s always having someone to take with you to the movies and talk about all things life with and who loves you and builds you up so unconditionally. Marriage has not brought me any troubles; it has been a growing experience, but a good one. It is only the 1000 mile move that has been hard, and even all that struggle has been worth it for the joys of being with such a wonderful man as Alex.

(I think that there is a tendency for people to think marriage is so much much better than being single. And while I wouldn’t go back, dang I enjoyed my single years and all the freedoms and adventures they lent me. Being a single adult with your life at your disposal is a wonderful experience. Being married to the love of your life is also wonderful, in a different way. But I digress in my thoughts.)

And so, here is a lesson that I have learned before, that a year is rarely all good or all bad, difficult or easy, but all comes together, and often the highest of highs and the lowest of lows together in a jumble. Didn’t I learn this the year my mother died, which was also the year I was swept off my feet and fell in love with Alex? And here I learn it again. For marriage has been one of the best things to happen to me, and moving away from home being one of the hardest.

Maybe it’s that I’ve been rewatching Doctor Who with Alex, or maybe the quote has always just stuck with me very deeply, but I’ve always felt so much the Doctor’s words from The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe:

“The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”

I think sometimes Alex feels guilty that what is classically supposed to be a blissful and unmarred first year of marriage where everyone is in a euphoric honeymoon phase is not something I have had.  I’m very glad that he gets to experience that and finds no struggles in his life changes. And while this year has been very difficult for me, it has not marred my first year of marriage as he might fear. I have so many wonderful, cherished thoughts and feelings as we’ve explored our first year as a married couple. And I’m so excited to live so many more years together, and learn and feel and experience and enjoy so many things with him, no matter where we are.

So I guess where I want to personally grow in the next year is just to continue to settle into my new life in Midland. I want to set down some roots and not feel so foundationless here. I’m not always sure what actions to take to achieve that. Maybe it’s just a resolution to actively search for and say yes to new opportunities to get out and experience life in Midland and the people around me. And to get back up and try again on the days I’m frustrated with it and try to avoid the low moods that can bring.

And I want to work at keeping in contact with those I left behind too. Even as I focus on making my home here in Texas, I don’t want my friendships and the home of Montana to weaken with that. I think, and refuse to believe otherwise, that both can be strengthened together, and I don’t have to let go of the one to get a firmer grasp on the other. They are both of such importance in my life.

And lastly, I want to work on being a better wife. Alex and I learned so much over the last year. Being married is so different than being roommates, and figuring out how to spend time together and how to let ourselves spend time apart has been an important part of our relationship that we’re still sorting out some days. I’m excited to see how our relationship continues to grow and deepen and get even better.

So here’s to 2020, and trying to be a better me in the relationships I already have and in searching out new ones to build.

On the Nervousness and Worry of Returning Home

On Friday, I go back to Montana for Christmas. I’m so excited! I’ve missed everyone so much, and the idea of spending time with family and friends and going to my home church and doing escape rooms and having Thai food again (Why is it so hard to find it in Midland?!) is such a good one.  I’ve been counting the days. I’ve got an Excel sheet to make sure I get it all in – all the girl time and the cocktails and the game nights and the movies. All the things I still haven’t found in Midland, or that just can’t be replaced.

And yet I’m nervous, too. As my dear and much more well traveled friend Amy has warned me, going home isn’t always easy. I have changed, naturally, with all my new life experiences. And those back home have changed with things that have happened since I left. And, as Amy said, sometimes it doesn’t all fit back into place like the day you left. And that worries me, deep down a bit. I need my friends. I need these experiences. They are necessary parts of me. I’d be so pained if I returned and found them no longer a natural fit. Not that I need everything to be just as it was, not that I don’t want people to have grown in my absence, but the core element of what I had, that comradery and friendship and time where I can totally relax and just be with people who know me on a deep and personal level and I know them and we all just hang out and talk about all things life deep and shallow… Man I’ve craved that so much. Not that I don’t get that with Alex, who knows me so well and who I can be myself around more than anyone. But a woman needs her girl time and her sibling time that is different than spouse time.

And there is also the fear of coming HOME home, of coming back to Midland. I have reached a place in church shopping here, where I’m not completely happy with the churches we have but I’m finding acceptance of the circumstances of it and trying to see the light in it. And visiting my home church which is so vibrant and deep and Christ centered is definitely one of the things I’m most looking forward to in Billings. But is it going to resurface and exasperate my frustrations of church shopping here? Am I going to get refreshed in girl time and time with deep rooted friendships and come back here and feel the loneliness more acutely for the reminder?

I want this trip to be a good thing. I want to go and find it easy to fall back into step with my old life and be refreshed in the things I’m still working to build in Midland but that I haven’t been able to find here yet. And I don’t want to come back to Midland and be frustrated that I can’t find those yet, and don’t even know where to find those things. Because damn somedays it’s painful and frustrating looking around for just a bit of a social circle and a good church and not knowing even where to start. And I don’t know how to ensure the trip is great or the return doesn’t leave an ache.

So amidst all my excitements and planning and texts and excel sheets, there’s these nagging worries that things could go wrong. Things could go wrong in Montana or in coming home to Texas. I could handle things wrong. I could focus on the wrong things.

And then there’s the other worries. I’m trying to balance spending all the time I need to get quality time with my friends and catching up, and trying to spend time with family and make sure no one feels slighted. I’m trying to set a solid schedule to get everything in with people who are being difficult to plan with and who I’m afraid are going to be frustrated with me when I have locked down a lot of things with other people and don’t have much flexible time to do other stuff last minute. I want to make sure I can get any solo time I need with people while not ignoring my loving and wonderful husband over Christmas. I’m trying to balance it all, and I just want it to be right. To be a good thing.

It will be a good thing, it will be good to see everyone, even if it isn’t perfect. And I will do my best to keep a positive attitude about it in Billings and Montana. But until it all plays out, I do wonder just what this trip will be for me, this first return home since I moved away.