Take a Walk.

Back when I lived in Minneapolis and Erica lived in Minneapolis, we used to take walks around Lake of the Isles as often as we could. The tradition started when we first met and I was living in what was and still a gorgeous old house in the Kenwood neighborhood, literally just down the street from the lake. Having lived in South and then North Minneapolis for most of my Minneapolis existence thus far, I reveled in my new proximity to the lakes - walks (or runs) became an almost daily thing, and soon I was organizing most of my friend hangouts around coffee and leisurely strolls around the lake. Nobody else loved it as much as I did like Erica, though.
I look at that circular sidewalk now as a sort of scrapbook...each step around it accounts for what we thought were tiny footnotes at the time, but later would recognize as huge chapters in our lives. I talked about this at Erica's wedding: how I could remember each walk that would plot out the growth of her relationship to Chris - from just a boy named C that she had started talking to over email, to the hilarious after-the-fact confession that they had met up on her most recent trip to South America, to the honest anxiety of the walk we had just before she met his parents for the first time, to the "So I think I'm might be moving to L.A." walk that simultaneously broke my heart for me and filled it with bright joy for her.
It was like exhaling, those walks. Whether stuff got stupidly weird or elatedly exciting or when it was one of those "I don't even KNOW how to feel right now" states, grabbing a coffee and going for a walk around the lake with Erica was the perfect way to just...feel better. Even when I went to L.A. right after I broke up with (my ex-boyfriend, not her husband) Chris, we took walks around the Silver Lake reservoir, near her house, and with each step, all of the things I had been keeping tucked so tightly inside that broken heart of mine could finally spill out into words and thoughts and feelings.
So we miss them, those walks.
And this week, I really needed them back.
It's been a perfect storm of stuff. Sometimes I feel like I'm making new friends here and this life can be really fun, and then the next day I'll feel like maybe no one here really knows or likes me - you know that thing where you go to summer camp and no one laughs at your jokes the way your friends do and they don't invite you to go to the canteen with them during free time and you just want to yell, "Everyone at HOME thinks I'm cool so it must be that YOU GUYS just aren't cool so I'll just go to the canteen BY MYSELF!" Yeah. It feels kind of like that.
Spending the first part of the week immobile and unproductive did more to overwhelm than relax me. I have so much going on right now - and I know the whole "stop glorifying the busy" thing and that it's all my choice to have so much stuff on my plate and in a few weeks things will get easier and I'll be so glad I had to much on my plate but right now I am overloaded with work and tasks and even though I know it's all stuff I said yes to right now I want to say no to all of itand just go hide under the covers, okay?! - and not being able to do everything I want to when I want to do it is sofrustrating. And I'm at that point where I want more than anything to be able to move and work out and do things because I am sotired of this body. I feel trapped in it. And I'll talk more about that later, but I just don't feel like...me. I feel ugly and fat and weird and sad and like it's always going to feel this way.
On Thursday I got home from my photoshoot and got a text from Erica about The Bachelor. We started texting back and forth about how our weeks had been: we were both having kind of a mopey, moody week, and she made a joke about astral planes being out of whack, and before I knew it, we were in a text convo until 10 p.m. The next morning, I woke up feeling better - I always do, in the mornings (I'm kind of that classic "Throw back the covers and SEIZE THE DAY!" morning type, which I'm glad for). I had a really great morning working on Girl from the Northwoods with Meg, which flowed into a suuuuper productive work day. And then, right around 6, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw a photo that a male acquaintance from up here had posted of his girlfriend...complete with a new engagement ring on her finger. I thought about how, two years ago when we first met, we both saw each other's profiles on OkCupid and it was kind of weird and awkward (because I don't think either of us necessarily saw each other in *that* way) but also like, "Oh hey, we both realize we have to do this sort of thing while living up here, so good luck to you, my friend!" And now he's engaged, I thought to myself, as I stared at the picture.
And then, before I knew it, I was sobbing. Like, sobbing - harder than I have in months. What is wrong with you, weirdo?! I asked myself, as I walked down the long hallway to the bathroom to grab some tissues. It was so stupid and so seemingly small, but there it was. And it felt like resetting a bone that wasn't healing right.
Here are the things that are hardest for me to admit: I really wanted to marry Chris. I really wanted for us to get married and have kids together. And in the beginning, and when we became serious, he told me that he wanted those things, too. And then when things started to get hard, he changed his mind and told me that he didn't think he ever wanted to get married again or have more kids. Which, when I'm feeling strong and good, I can believe and simply chalk it up to a really crappy bait-and-switch. When I'm feeling dark and moody, though, I always think of that scene from When Harry Met Sally and that inalienable truth that every woman knows - that when most men say that they don't want to get married, they just mean that they don't want to get married to you.
So I sat back down and just let myself admit that it's hard to see someone else reach that point in their life, because I feel like I got soclose to it and I really thought I was done and now I feel like I'm just so far from it again. And, again, when I'm feeling good and strong and on the right track, I can be the kind of girl who can say - and believe - that it's good that none of the men I've loved have wanted to marry me because it leaves me free for the one who does. But when I'm feeling sad and lonely and like I have so far to go before I can get to where I want to be, I feel like I'm running out of time, and I get scared that those things are really never going to happen for me. And I hate talking about this stuff, because it's not that I've ever just wanted to get married and have kids for the sake of getting married and having kids. I want to get married to the right person and have kidswith the right person. But for the first time in my life, I find myself watching commercials that have babies in them and I feel that small little niggling worry about time and ovaries and clocks ticking. And then I struggle with my body and I wonder if I'm ever going to get mine - the one I'm used to, the one I like - back - and if I don't, will I just stay trapped in this one forever which will probably mean that I'll be alone forever because if I don't find myself attractive right now, who the hell else is going to, you know?
So I cried some more and then I calmed down a bit and then I picked up my phone and texted Erica. "I think I'm finally at that stage where other people's engagements make me sad...which is THE WORST, because I want to be happy and all "yay LOVE" but instead I'm just weepy and stupid about it."
She texted back immediately about how she was just thinking about envy and how she can totally relate on how it's the worst when you're in the kind of place where that's your automatic reaction instead of genuine joy for your friends, and boom - for the second day in the row, I was having one of the longest, most cathartic, comforting, amazing text conversations I've ever had. It was like taking a walk around the lake with her all over again...only over text, and from more than half a continent away.Which was comforting all on it's own, that we could have that with those things, instead of not being able to because of them.
It feels like the older I get, the more inverted I become with some things while simultaneously becoming extroverted with others. It occurred to me, while writing this post, that I've become much more private about this kind of stuff than I used to be. Erica and I had a conversation a few months ago where she gently pointed out that she noticed it's really hard for me to admit when things aren't going well or aren't exactly how I would like them to be, and she's right. I do have this thing where I want everyone to think that I've got it together, everything's covered, things are great! Because I don't want to be that girl who looks like a trainwreck, or has to have people worry over her, or talks about her problems. But I've also noticed that the more private I become about the stuff I'm struggling with, the more trapped I feel by it. Locked in. Suffocated, in a way. Dishonest, even. And when I do finally give myself permission to share the hard stuff with others, that's when things - I - start to feel powerful again. Brave. Better.
Like exhaling.