Bloom Where You are Planted

Hey friends. It’s been awhile, huh? I had the best intentions of having a regular upload schedule for this blog, but I also want to make sure when I sit down to chat with y’all that the words are coming from a real place. No filler. No fluff. 100% authentically me. And while I have typed and re-typed several posts in the last month, none of them have felt particularly worthy of a “publish.”

Here’s the thing. I love to write. I feel like there is no medium in which I can express my feelings better than in writing. In high school I kept a journal for 3 years straight. I never missed a daily entry. Some days it was a simple, “today was okay. Not much happened.” Other times I would bleed emotion onto the lined paper the way only an angsty 16 year old could. While I don’t journal as often now (its a habit I am trying to get back into), I will occasionally open a journalling app and “brain dump” my feelings. Today one of those apps e-mailed me my entry from 3 months ago. August 22, 2019, entitled “The Night Before.” I’ll share an exert.

When I was in college, I used to fantasize about packing my car and making a grand cross country road trip. My rescue dog in the back, my favorite songs on the radio, the sun always shining and the traffic always clear. I used to tell myself “Self! One day you’ll do it!”

Now here I am. 10:34 pm the night before I do the very thing I once dreamt of.

And I am terrified.

Not of car trouble, not of hotel issues, not of Abby being crazy or Logan leaving me in the dust.
No. I’m terrified that I will get out there and realize I am not the girl I imagined I was. Maybe I really am just high strung, anxiety ridden, detail obsessed, can’t hang Jessie. Maybe the version of myself that I have been cultivating for the last year is just a facade I’ve built to hide the fact that I am the same, old, scared me. Nothing changed.

I vividly remember writing this entry. It was the night before I was set to begin my “grand cross country road trip” from VA to WA. Abby was snoring in my bed instead of her crate because I felt bad that she would be confined to hotel rooms and my car for the next week. I, however, was wide awake. In the year I lived in South Carolina I had really latched on to this idea of “finding my true essence.” This young woman I once followed on YouTube spoke in great lengths about affirmations and bringing your “true self” to reality. The idea that I could become whoever I wanted to be simply by believing it was so enticing. She then told us she could teach us how to reach “true alignment” by taking her $1000 online course and I quickly hit the unsubscribe button. Still, I liked the idea of imagining who Ideal Jess would be. I wrote a list of qualities about her. Here is some of that list.

She is fun.
She is shining and warm.
She has long wavy hair and wears chacos/full length overalls unabashedly.
Her anxiety doesn’t cause her to lash out at people.
She drinks tea and runs and reads her bible and does CrossFit and climbs rocks and uses a nalgene.
She hikes in the dewy, lush forests of the Evergreen State with her dog.
She has freckles and tan lines from being outside.
She is kind.
She is focused on her goals.
She is disicplined.
She learns to spell disciplined correctly.
She puts her laundry away instead of throwing it on the floor at night.
She makes the bed with less pillows.
Her aesthetic is clean and cozy. Not too cluttered.
She doesn’t try too hard to do these things. These things are just facets of herself. Sure, she still hates doing dishes and vacuuming and loves eating pizza and Thai food instead of cooking and maybe she said she would learn guitar and never did, but she’s still got time y’know?

Here’s the thing. When I wrote this 3 months ago, I was already so many of these things. I was already this person. Was I everything on this list? No, obviously. Did I, and do I, still have things about myself I need to work on? Absolutely. But I was so convinced that I was not only nowhere near this ideal version of myself, but that the current version of myself was someone not worth being. I hated her. I hated that I felt like I couldn’t change her. I spoke in the entry about how no one in my new state would know anything about me, and that I could shed this, apparently undesirable, version of myself in exchange for a new, more likable Jess. Just completely throw away my old skin and don new clothes.

I read this diary entry and my heart is sad for her. My heart is sad for the Jess who felt like she was not a loveable person, that she had nothing redeemable about her. Who felt as though her worst quality couldn’t be more severe than never learning to play guitar. Otherwise, she was failing. But let’s be real, even at my best I am far more broken than never playing guitar.

But that’s the point, right?

That’s how this all works.

Spoiler alert: I still hate doing the dishes. I still can’t spell dicsiplined on the first try. I joined a local CrossFit box and quit 3 weeks later, I’m now doing bro splits at the gym I work at and running with my friends. There are a total of 7 pillows on my bed, but I will admit I am cutting down on the clutter and my laundry is almost always put away immediately. I’m more into coffee these days and I almost exclusively use a hydroflask. I’ll probably never be tan.

I started this Project Comeback with a specific desire to be a better version of myself. I wanted to abandon the girl who was crying in her car and trade her in for a fit, spontaneous, vivacious, newer model.

See, we live in a world where the you you are now isn’t good enough. You should be someone else, right? We are so frequently inundated with ads and images and social media content from companies whose entire goal is to make us feel lesser than. Because if they can tell that girl she isn’t worthy without this product, she’ll buy anything to feel up to par.

What if, instead of trying to change her, I nurtured that girl? What if I told her things were going to work out and that maybe this path won’t look like we thought it would 3 months ago? But, that we’re going to end up exactly where we are supposed to be. What beautiful fruits would she bear? What wonderful things would happen if I just stopped believing she wasn’t good enough? What if I weeded her garden, removed the negative influences, and gave her space to…just be?

I’m not sure. But I’ve got a watering can and a whole lot of time. So let’s find out.

Catch ya later.

Jess