A Shift in Thought

There have been a few times in my life where I knew that I was at a point of no return. Can you recognize them in your own life? When you are just on the cusp of some event or decision that will change your future forever?

I knew it when Alison left for college.

I knew it when Kari told me she couldn't live at home anymore.

I knew it when my Mom and I moved out of the house and left Dad behind.

I knew it when I moved out of Bryan's house (the second time) and we ended things "for real this time."

I remember walking on Coronado Beach with Alison. I was visiting a few months post-breakup and she asked me if I thought Bryan and I would ever be together again. I told her no. At that moment in time I felt that we were done. That I was on the brink of a completely different life. One that did not include Bryan. I told her I was at peace that it didn't work out.

I married him a few months later.

Obviously, when you get that feeling that you are beginning a path you know is different than before, you don't know what lies in front of you. You just feel the shift.

I feel it now. I sense it. I've felt it before and I feel it now. My life is on the brink of something new and I feel like it's mostly internally. I have been experiencing a shift in my thought process and I'm dissecting some things I thought I knew but I really don't know at all.

It's hard to articulate. Things I thought were black and white are not. What was once important is not. Priorities are shifting and relationships are changing. It's a little disconcerting. I'm seeing and experiencing life in a way that I have not before.

I know and recognize that it's happening but I'm not jumping in. If you know me well you know that I tend to bury my head a bit when I'm processing. Imagine me being the little circle that develops when I program is trying to load. That's how I've been for the past few months. I feel that this time, it's not that I don't want this change... I know I need it. It's welcome. Instinctively, it's not the time to run in blindly and figure it all out as it comes. Sometimes life needs an loose action plan. I'm in the process of developing mine.

The Last One

The scene: My sisters and I are on our way to Paint Nite up in Fresno. Kari had bought us tickets for Christmas and in April, we finally align our schedules to go. I'm in the backseat of Kari's car trying not to throw up (I get sick in the back of cars) and we're talking. We haven't been alone to talk candidly in a while, so the topics are many in just a short 45 minute car ride. At one point, I say "I wonder what the last picture of the five of us was?" and the car gets quiet.

At one time I had a dad, a mom and two sisters. I now have a dad, a stepmom, a mom, a stepdad, two sisters, two brother-in-laws, a husband, three nieces, three nephews, a son and a daughter.

Whew. So much amazing growth. So many people that I am proud to call family. In all of those relationships is so much love... but there's also some pain.

I was born into a family of five people. The way I think, behave, speak and emote can all be tied back to my family. The core of who I am was built as the youngest child of a family of five. Life, education, love and loss have all impacted who I am but the roots are the same. They cannot be altered.

It is extremely hard to pretend that this period of my life did not exist. It is so tough to feel like you are not allowed to acknowledge the loss of divorce. It is frustrating to totally love the people your parents married but still miss (sometimes overwhelmingly) having your "family".

You would think that the two couldn't go hand in hand. If I miss the "OG Farpellas" and my heart breaks that we'll never be "the Farpella family" again then that should mean that I don't love my Dad and his wife or my Mom and her husband. But it does. It lives within me. I love that they found people to love and to love them. I love that they're happy. I care for them. I champion them. I support them.

But I also miss my family. And it freaking sucks because it feels like I'm not supposed to (or allowed to).

The reality of it all is that the older I get, the more I start to tie who I am back to my childhood. The more I parent the more I flashback to being a kid. For a just moment I am transported to 1995 and I'm 7 years old, reading books in my closet and ignoring my dad's calls to come eat dinner.

When I talk about getting car-sick, I think of all those camping trips where my parents thought "this time" would be different so they'd would sit me in the backseat, only to have to pull over to the side of the road (many times on the side of a mountain!) to clean up vomit from the car, change my clothes and then put me in the front with a paper bag. I'd end up feeling so crummy that whole day from a few hours in the backseat when they could have just sat me upfront to begin with. I'd also be anxious the whole trip because I knew in a few short days I'd have to travel home and the whole cycle would likely repeat itself.

Now that I'm older and a parent, it both cracks me up that they didn't accept my travelling limitations and irritates me that they didn't learn from experience (at my expense).

I feel pain when I think of the things we'll never do again. Like go camping or sit around the table playing cards.

Or, take a family photo.

Neither of my parents come from a broken family. Their parents, for better or worse, stayed together until the very end. My mom could stop by her parents house to have coffee with her mom and dad until he passed away a few years ago. She went on vacation with her parents to the Azores multiple times as an adult.

My dad went over to his parents house to help his dad with rabbit traps and his mom with cooking well until he was an adult.

Both of them could always go "home".

Sometimes, life gets hard enough that I wish I could just go home. I wish I could sit on the porch with my parents and tell them that I suck at this life stuff. Or go to Christmas and smell my dads pot roast and my moms banana bread.

Every once in a while I'll remember the way her perfume and his cologne smelled just before they left for work or an event.

I can't help but wonder what Shepherd and Lauriana will remember about their childhood home. Will they remember the clutter all over the dining room table? The way their mom always ran around looking for her shoes before leaving the house? The times when Daddy wrestled with them in the living room?

It's easy for me to carried away with how things are and how badly I want to change them to be better. But then, every once in a while, I realize that this might just be the moment my kids wish they could go back to when their mom and dad are long gone.

In the those moments I try to snap a photo... because you never know when the last one will be the last one.

xo, 

Meg

That Familiar Twinge

Did you know I'm turning 30 this year? In just twenty-two weeks and four days I'll be 30.

I'll be honest and say that I'm not that worried about it. I'm at peace about turning 30. Being 30. Living as a thirty-year-old. Sure, I have the normal concerns like; what have I done with my life? Or why do I still feel like I'm in high school? Or why must I have adult acne?!

I also think about how I spent all of my 20s being fat. Like...from 20-29 I have been fat. Or, if we were being nit-picky - I've been overweight. I can't be fat. Fat is an actual substance and my whole being isn't fat. My being has had too much fat. It's all semantics to me. I've been an Extra Large far more often than I've been a Medium. When I was 20 I was 140 pounds. At 24 I whittled my way down to 165 pounds.  At 29... I am much more than 165 and way (way) more than 140.

Of course, I'd like to not spend my 30s having so much fat surrounding my skeleton. I'd like to not be so winded when playing with my kids. Or shaking when I'm holding the diaper bag, the toddler, the purse and the car seat and the groceries and the hand of my eldest. You know? There are a lot of those kinds of thoughts.

It hasn't been all about my weight though. Or my adult acne and not feeling like a legitimate adult. I've also been thinking and feeling some things that I haven't decided should be public or not. But, there are some things I think the public should know. Not because I feel like what I have to say will be world changing, but it might just change one persons world. It's cliche, but also true. But it also might bring pain to people I love, in a roundabout sort of way.

If I'm being perfectly honest, during my blogging absence I've been thinking a lot. I've reconciled some things that needed to be reconciled. I've addressed some things that needed to be addressed. I'm still denying some things that ought not to be denied. Having the knowledge that I'm turning 30 has brought some of these things to the forefront of my mind. But it's only been in the past few months that I've started to write blog entries in my head.

That old familiar twinge of needing to suss it all out in text has come back. I get quiet when I'm working things out. In real life and online - it's the same. I hide away from friends and family when I'm having emotional problems... and physical ones too. The time always comes when that is no longer an option. When it first seemed healthy to back away slowly, it now feels destructive. I wish I could find the balance between the two but balance has always eluded me. In many ways I am an all or nothing type of gal.

The time has come where all the things I feel called to say must be said instead of stuffed down because no one wants to hear them. And maybe they don't need to hear them.

But...you know, maybe they do.