Friday, June 14, 2013

on my own

i'll go ahead and admit it; i've had a strange time lately.

maybe even a hard time lately...which is not something i dig saying, because i feel like i should be done talking about myself having a hard time....i mean, haven't i been talking about having a hard time for seriously a few years now? can't i just shut up about it?! :P

no but really....i guess i might stop blogging about "hard times" when said hard times end. i'm not naive enough to think that life will ever be easy. i don't want life to ever be easy, frankly. but i just mean the din quieting a bit. the fever breaking. the tide ebbing away from my now-soaked beach towel. and on and on with the metaphors. (i especially liked the last one. it made me feel cool.)

jenn being gone almost two months is just...i can't really give it a word. it feels like so much longer because it's coincided with my "in and out of the hospital every couple of weeks" stage of life...which seems like it's been foreverlong. random little note: i am pretty sure some kind of weird timewarp happens inside hospitals, because every time i go in one to stay, the minute i'm gone it seems like it was centuries ago that i was in the hospital at all. oh, and bonus time if i was there for surgery.

so anyway....jenn's been gone, but she's still been "here" at the MTC. we've been able to write her as much as we want and have regular correspondence, and that will change when she "ships out" next week. she'll be on the other side of the world, literally. and let me say here that absolutely NOTHING fills the jenn-shaped hole in my life and in my heart. nothing. sometimes it feels like i cut my heart in half and lent it to someone for eighteen months. i don't feel complete with her so far away, we have always been so close. i never realized how glad i was that she got so into her songwriting and recording her music and stuff until AFTER she'd been gone a few days and i found that listening to my favorite songs of hers did something to pack the wound a bit that her absence has left in me.

i think her being gone has probably had an effect on me in ways i'm not even consciously aware of. probably it contributes to several aspects of why i've felt i've had a strange and rough time lately. the thing is, though, the timing of everything in her life and mine is honestly so perfect in a weird way. i thought for a long time that when i was "done" with my illness, the process and the surgeries and everything, and getting back into the mindset and life of a SINGLE and HEALTHY person, that she'd be there. that we would maybe even move out together and take on the world together...the grand and exciting world of student life in provo and orem ;)
...but as it comes down to it, i am on my own for this. i'm on my own to get physically back in a place where i can work as much as possible so that i can pay debts and move out. i'm on my own to tackle that single healthy person world, which i never really got to do before i got married and before i got sick. i'm doing it all on my own, it's down to me. and the thing is, it's always been that way for jenn. she has been on her own with school and work and making a future for herself. jenn being across the world on her mission, able to write and send support but not to actually BE here is almost perfect. i know myself and the weaknesses i've had as i've blundered through becoming an adult. i know that i might have ended up being too dependent on jenn in some ways. i have worked HARD to shed the whole dependence thing that slowly came on during my marriage. i had a couple of people who literally became crutches for me. *shudder. i KNOW i could never go back to being that way again. i have grown and changed too much.
 BUT- i also know that jumping back into life and into the world with jenn here....it would have been like an automatic comfort zone.
and i don't want a comfort zone. i don't want crutches or relying on someone else to push me to do what i should be doing and what i need to be doing. i want to do it ON MY OWN.

and i'm going to! and i GET to. and the best part is, when jenn gets home, we will both be stronger women and more independent human beings. that is what we both deserve and want and strive for.

life is so poetic sometimes it can be downright nauseating. ;) after all the Lord knows what He's doing...jenn and i are both where we need to be and doing what we need to do in order to become all that we can. i'm not sure that either of us would be able to reach certain heights if things had been any other way.


everything is falling into place. i may not be able to see more than a few steps ahead of me, but i trust the path i'm on.