Hot Tub Bass Transformational Evidence: Processing the Beach Trip

I get really overwhelmed by good memories. But I'm going to ATTEMPT to process and record at least a bit. This post will be long and basically just a journal entry for me because typing is so much faster than handwriting. I'll probably share it anyway, but I'll include headings in case you're not interested in reading a pure journal entry XD

In this essay I will...

- Explain what the beach trip was
- Record (or at least suggest to myself) some specific memories I want to remember
- Talk about how weird it is being back to normal life
- Remind myself of an important truth that occurred

What was this trip?
Yesterday, we got back from my 30th Birthday Beach Trip, a dream that has been in the works for about eighteen months. I have been blessed with some DYNAMITE, SOUL-CONNECTION friends, however...a lot of them live super far away. Like, Florida, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia*. Summer of 2022, I had the idea of getting all my far-flung best friends together for a week at the beach. I threw out the idea and started texting everyone every few months being like, "And don't forget, February of 2024 if you're available..."

Well, we did it, with the tragic exceptions of Original Fire Faery Ellie from Florida (thanks, Covid) and First Blogger Best Friend Jordan (thanks, being an adult and having responsibilities). I know this trip would have been even more incredible with y'all on it, so we're gonna have to do it again. Love and missed y'all so much!

Some Memories and Moments
The majority of the trip was just chilling. We watched TV shows (Jury Duty, Modern Family, Raising Hope) and movies (Disney's Robin Hood [adorable], Behind the Curve [hilarious], Horrible Bosses [classic], Airplane [educational...?], Tangled [nostalgic], Prince of Egypt [epic]). We read (I finished a book that Cassidy had let me borrow and started another one that she brought for me), did crossword puzzles (well, I leaned over Gabe's shoulder and offered limited but accurate help), did daily games like Connections, Wordle, Quordle, and Octordle. We also played games like The Voting Game (among other things, I was voted most likely to win the lottery but lose the ticket, and most likely to have had "No" as her first word), Hot Seat, Love Letter, Star Wars Imperial Assault**, Wavelength (Star Wars is fantasy, not Sci-Fi?), and Fishbowl.

We also talked, a LOT. These people know the way to my heart is asking dumb crap like, "Would you still love me if I were a lamp?" and seeing what happens. In that particular case, what happened was a discussion of if you had to turned into a sentient but immobile object for ten years, what object would you want to be (some answers were a stuffed animal [Cassidy], a blanket [Aaron], or something useful like a computer [Ryan])? Which led to would YOU rather be a sentient but immobile object for ten years or would you rather your PARTNER be the object?

Such random games of Would You Rather persisted throughout the week whenever there was a lull, and occasionally they wandered instead into How Much Would It Take, where we asked each other how much money we'd require to do ridiculous things, like let a stranger touch your bellybutton (complete with a noodling sound effect, to which Stephen would always reply, "What was that?"), French kiss a dromedary (you need to Google "dromedary tongue" right now), only be allowed to poop outside for two weeks, eat a live cockroach, give up the internet, put a pigeon in your mouth, etc. All of these questions required lots of debate and qualifications (Is the pigeon alive? Yes, but gently sedated. Is it diseased? No, it is healthy; you will not contract any illnesses from the pigeon. Are you picturing putting it in your mouth head first, butt first, or wing first?)

At one point (late at night, only me, Alicia, Cassidy, and Aaron were still up), the questions led to the fact that I think baths are gross because I don't like the idea of putting my bare skin against basically a wet floor. Cassidy pointed out that that's what we'd been doing in the hot tub the night before, albeit it with bathing suits on. That led to a brief silence, which led to me sharing a bucket list item of mine, which led to us braving a spider-guarded electrical box to heat up the hot tub at 1am, which led to said bucket list item being checked off. (Aaron tastefully remained upstairs until we returned a suspicious hour later.)

As silly as it was, the adrenaline-spiked fun of doing something even slightly risky with two of your best girl friends in the wee hours of the morning is a special kind of elation. These girls are genuinely my soul-mates. Cassidy has been a source of love and support*** through all of the worst times of my life, sticking by me when I was a version of myself that I personally would never forgive. Alicia and I share the unique bond of two strangers who were thrust together in a Spanish-only-speaking home in Spain for three days, and subsequently cried in front of each other and braided hair and wandered Europe relatively unsupervised.

Post hot tub event at the beach, I was grinning like an idiot and my skin tingled like it was carbonated as I tried to go to sleep. One of the top ten happiest times of my life. I was unreasonably happy, deep down in my soul.

At one point during the trip, I texted Cassidy, "I literally feel like I can breathe easier with all y'all around. Like this trip is contributing to my physical health."

I also sent a text that said, "Me in this car with the bass = Joey about to watch the movie that has Ursula instead of Phoebe in it: 'I'm so happy,'" which will only make sense if you're a huge Friends fan, and leads me to another top moment of the trip: riding in Bumblebee with Aaron.

For the fifteen or so years I've known Aaron, his dream car has been a Camaro. I used to take pictures of Camaros with my crappy slide-keyboard cellphone and send them to him. Well, last summer, Aaron finally got his Camaro, and not just any Camaro, but the *doesn't remember any specifics about the year etc. but it's apparently the exact one that is Bumblebee from Transformers? If you know, you know, and if you don't, you now know enough*.

But it's, like, not just the fact that I was riding in a car that we used to dream about. It's that I was in the car with the OLDER BROTHER I adopted over the internet when I was fifteen, who has shaped who I am today, whom I trust to drive me places in a sick car, and also: the car's bass was amazing, which...I'm pretty sure me with bass music is a lot of people on actual drugs. The combination of "wait, I feel so safe and loved?!" + "holy sh*t this car is cool" + "I can feel the bass vibrating my organs" = I don't even have words. An unreal time. (In exchange, he got a thoroughly authentic little sister experience because not only was I like, "Hey can you drive somewhere?" but I also brought no money for the boba tea I wanted, then I spilled it in his car, right before I realized I had lost my phone and had to go back into the tea shop to look for it, but it wasn't there, it was actually under my car seat. So. Really just a winning experience for everyone.)

It's also always a good day when I don't have to be the first person to ask a group, "So, did anyone have weird dreams last night?" Alicia had that covered for me.

Weird Being Back
I'm doing my best, but I don't know if it's possible to explain how incredibly good the trip was for me. *sits and stares at the computer* Yeah, I don't know what else I can say. It was one long dream come true. It was transformative.

Or was it?

I'm sure most people have experienced this feeling at some point. You go on an amazing trip or have a really meaningful night with someone or...I don't know, something BIG and AWESOME happens, but then...

You go home. The night ends. The moment passes.

It affected your soul, so you feel like everything should be different afterward, but your house still looks the same and your job still exists and you're alone again and...it's like the Amazing Experience happened on a separate plane of existence and now you're back in the real world and everything is...kind of the same? How can that be? How can it be over and in the past and life picks up as it was?

I don't know what to do with myself now. I don't know how to live regular life after being THAT happy and fulfilled. The trip has convinced me that there's another quality of life out there, life with more love and more people and more happiness and more kindness and more fun, but...how do I make a change? What do I need to do to live in deeper and more incarnate community? How can I love people better and be around them more? What do I need to DO?

I don't feel like I can go back to living so shallow and unfulfilled after a trip like that, but I'm also afraid that my depression is gonna kneecap me and keep me from making the changes necessary to live better. Or if not my depression my...allergy to vulnerability. Living in deep community takes courage because you have to be vulnerable. For the beach trip, I basically invited all the people with whom I'm already comfortable being vulnerable, but—as I've said—they are the people I DON'T get to do life with. Some of them live half and whole countries away from me. If I want to live deeper and better in my everyday life, I'm gonna have to learn how to be vulnerable with new people, and that thought makes me a little nauseous. But clearly, based on the beach trip, it can be so worth it. But I have to be so brave first.

An Important Truth
While riding in Bumblebee with Aaron, grinning like an IDIOT while my hand vibrated against the armrest, knowing that Gabe and Cass and Alicia would be home when we returned, I had a thought:

These are some of the best days of my entire life, and I would've missed them if I had let my depression win.

I've heard the quote that says something to the effect of, "When you're sad, remember that some of the best days of your life are still to come." But trying to believe that and EXPERIENCING it are two completely different things.

The fact that if I had given up when I was afraid I would never be happy again, I would have missed Hot Tub Bucket List At 1am and Bass Music With My Older Brother was a sobering and deeply joyful realization. Not gonna lie, I teared up in the car.

And then to think that maybe there are STILL some best days to come is a hope that feels like it might sustain me. When I feel sad and hopeless, I can use the beach trip as empirical evidence that even after pitch darkness, there can be blinding, so-worth-the-wait light. I know there's value in being present and not living for the weekend or for the future, but sometimes, in the midst of depression, living for the future is the way to go. It might suck now, but it'll be worth it again one day. There is real hope that there are more Beach Trip Days in my future, and that is an encouraging thought.

~ Stephanie

* Well, Virginia is only like an hour away, but STILL.

** And by "we" I mean "the four guys played, while the three girls sat in the hot tub and talked about The Last House on Needless Street, ACOTAR, and The Fire Faery Story"

*** And humor, wisdom, devil's advocate, shoulder to cry on, animal knowledge, learning to see multiple sides of an issue, logic, sarcasm, etc.

Third of Life Crisis

Oof. I haven't felt this much pressure to present a Changed, Updated Self since I got married in 2016.

Before that, I felt the same pressure in 2011, when I came back from taking a three-week trip to Europe without my family.

These are the only three times I've felt this exact brand of pressure. What is causing it this time?

Turning thirty :)

Thirty is still young—for sure. But you're not a kid. You're definitely, undeniably NOT a kid. You're not a teenager. You're not a "twenty-something." You may be immature and you certainly still have a lot to learn, but you're an adult. It feels like the grace period for figuring out life has expired. By this point, you should know how to do your taxes or who to pay to do them for you. You should know how to cook meals. You should know how to get established at an eye doctor and a dentist. You should know when to buy expensive staple pieces and if it's appropriate to by anything trendy.

There is now a whole, fully functioning generation that is younger than you, but old enough to be in college.

Of all the topics I've blogged about multiple times, this is The One: this concept of constantly being surprised that I'm still Me. At every milestone age, I'm confused that Brunette Superwoman hasn't taken the baton from me. It's still just Me. I guess maybe that won't ever stop blowing my mind?

And now I'm wondering something. See, I can do all of those things I listed above. I do know how to get my taxes done (even though that means handing Gabe all the necessary paperwork and saying, "Mkay do you want me to refill your water while you do this?"). I can cook and make appointments and buy expensive clothes when I need to. I can really do most things that adults are supposed to be able to do.

So I think the question buried under all of this is actually, "When will I be able to be proud of myself?"

See, I've always been proud of Brunette Superwoman, who is a fictitious projection of what I thought I would/could become by age thirty-ish. She's a powerhouse. She's so capable it's scary. She's maybe what I might've become without depression, but...that's a dumb, dangerous game. There was never a version of me who didn't struggle with depression, because—in reality—there's only ever been one me. I'm not going into any multiverse theories right now.

I guess what's really happening in my mind isn't "When am I going to feel grownup?" or "When do I become Brunette Superwoman?"* but "When will I ever feel like I've 'done it'?" And maybe that answer is still "Never." Maybe no one ever feels like they've "done it" or "made it."

I did have a really weird out-of-body experience last week. This'll be too mystical/spiritual for some people, but last week while lying on the couch, something in a TV show triggered something in my brain and I was inhabited by my College Self for two minutes or so. College Me was alive and present in my brain alongside Current Me, and I got to watch her look around at the life I'd built with Gabe.

"This is your apartment?" she breathed, staring at the gray-purple walls and big TV and space, all the space that was legally mine—mine and my husband's. She realized that her future husband was a chemical engineer, and she was a curriculum developer. She had real job—a career.

She was enchanted by the decorations. Everything was gray and teal and she loved it. She couldn't believe I owned all this stuff. We'd bought a couch and a couple of perfect chairs and a really nice dining room table.

"This is your life?" she breathed. "How can you feel like you haven't made it?"

Until I started typing about it, I had actually forgotten about that bizarre experience. (Man, this keeps HAPPENING to me lately. I'll be mid-post and get T-boned with something that takes the post in a completely different direction.)

So. Jeez. Never mind, I guess? Maybe I'm doing okay. Maybe we all are. Maybe our younger selves would be impressed. Maybe we're all the Super Versions of ourselves just by freakin being here still. If you're alive, you've done it. You've made it. Damn, sometimes just being alive is the hardest part.

If you're reading this, I'm telling you that you have permission from this random thirty-year-old to be proud of yourself—NOW. Whatever it's taken to get you here, you got here. Whatever state you're in, YOU'RE HERE, and that's something to be proud of.

Every time I blog about her, I think it'll be the last time Brunette Superwoman haunts me, but she still pops up in my mind's eye as a wistful future possibility. Maybe she always will. I know she's not coming, there's only ever gonna be me, but...

I dunno, maybe I can do it. Maybe it's like when they needed the Ring to be destroyed and all they had was Frodo to do it. He wasn't Brunette Superman, but, I mean, he still got the job done.

I guess I'll try to be proud of myself as I am. If I'm going to assume everyone else is doing the best they can, the least I can do is give myself the same courtesy. So.

Yay thirty. I've decided that I've made it :)

~ Stephanie

* I can feel some of y'all prepping your "But you ARE Brunette Superwoman to me!" All I can say is that whatever you're seeing isn't what I'm talking about.

The Power of the 10-Minute Timer

I don't know why I started doing this, but recently I've been setting a timer for ten minutes and doing as much of a task as I can in those ten minutes. When the timer goes off, I'm allowed to stop and check "do some of X" off my to-do list.

I'm not so much a procrastinator as I am an avoider. Those feel like different things in my mind. Sometimes I will know that something won't take very long and I'll actively want to do it, but it's like I'm scared of it. It's that quality of being stuck in Flight mode all the time.

Other times I'll know that something will, in fact, take a very long time—more than one day's worth of time and effort—but I know that I need to do some of it today, and I just...can't. It's that fear/Flight mode.

But the ten-minute timer has solved this problem about 95% of the time. In fact, this post has been rattling around in my brain for about a week and I've been putting off writing it. However, I said to myself, "Just write what you can in ten minutes," so here I am, with 1:24 minutes to go. (Yes, it has taken me over eight minutes just to write four paragraphs.)

And here's the thing: In 50 seconds, the timer on my phone will go off, and I'll hit "Repeat" and keep writing. Because that's the thing:

Starting a task is BY FAR the hardest part. Like it's actually unbelievable how hard it is to begin a task compared with how hard it is to keep going. It's like the human mind is a giant dresser that needs to be slid across the room, and once you get a little momentum, it's possible just to keep pushing it until it's in place.

This is old news to some of you. I'm sure there's psychology about this, but I don't know what it is. It probably has to do with depression and dopamine. I just know that if I give myself permission to do a task for only ten minutes, more often than not I put in a legitimate amount of time and effort, and it's not that bad.

Sometimes I do stop after the timer goes off, and that's always acceptable too. I'm not lying to myself that I only have to do ten minutes while secretly having an agenda to do it longer (although that is totally something I would do). The deal is that I only have to do ten minutes, and if I want to keep going after that, of course that's allowed too.

For me, this has worked with cleaning the apartment, tackling big work projects, going to the gym, and more. I don't know if it'll work for everyone, but I think it's worth a shot.

Set a ten-minute timer and see what happens.

~Stephanie

The Fourth Heartbreak Continues

Four years ago today, I published this post, called "My Fourth Heartbreak," where I talk about making the decision to move to Winston-Salem for Gabe's job. I talked about how hard it is to leave my friends, my church, my tribe, but I was so confident that God knew what he was doing, and that if he was calling us away, it was to something even better. I said that God's "better" might not be better friends or a better church, but even if it's just a better relationship with him, it'll still be worth it.

Well. I don't know what to make of that post today. I imagine my feelings might be like how it feels to reread your marriage vows after getting divorced.

A lot of unexpected things have happened or not happened in the last four years. When I wrote that post, I didn't know Covid was gonna hit and prevent us from saying goodbye to our friends or our church before moving. I didn't know Covid was gonna keep us from meeting neighbors and making new friends and exploring the new area. I thought I would have kids by now, which would usher in a new season of life and new kinds of relationships. I didn't know I'd lose my personality and willpower to depression.

The Stephanie who wrote that post could rock her life in Winston-Salem. Unfortunately, she died and there's just me. I don't know who to blame for that. Me? God? Covid?

There's no way for me to write this post without making the people who love us here feel inadequate.* Y'all are probably gonna read this and feel some version of, "Well damn, sorry I'm not as good as your Raleigh friends, asshole," and that's fair. If someone I knew wrote a post like this, that's how I would feel too. I don't know what to do with that, but I need to process this anyway, so I'm just gonna keep writing.

Honestly, I don't know why life feels the way it does to me. Maybe it really is something about the aborted grief we're trying to navigate as we mourn the lives—and people—that Covid killed. It's a weird thing to mourn. Being mad a disease isn't profitable, and I'm not really sure if Covid's to blame for what's going on in my heart anyway.

Am I just mad at God? At this point, kinda, yeah. I wasn't four years ago. I was sad, but I trusted God. I trusted that he would bring us Better.

But what we have now doesn't feel better. Certainly not a better relationship with him. I am spiritually sucked dry. I don't even have the spiritual energy to drag my body to the well.

I know tons of Bible characters and tons of people could attest to feeling the same way. It looks like God isn't gonna keep his promises, but he always does. Sometimes it takes him a long time. Sometimes there's wandering around in the wilderness for forty years.

I guess that's what it feels like: wandering around in the wilderness, trying to believe in a Promised Land.**

The January 2020 post ended with, "But I really do trust God. I really do trust my husband. I really do believe that if we're supposed to move, it will be a good thing, and one day I will look back...and know why [God] wanted us to do this."

Well, I still don't know. Maybe it's the friends I'm getting closer to now. Maybe it's being nearer Sarah and James and Gideon and Baby Grace. Maybe it's Gabe serving on the leadership team at Crossroads. Maybe it's Gabe being an awesome engineer at Unifi. All those things sound good, right?

So what's my problem? Maybe it really is just depression? Maybe this life IS the Better and I just can't feel it?

(I don't know if that's better or worse, to be honest XD)

Now that I think about it, I'm a little bit made at Past Me too. I'm mad at her for having so much hope and confidence, because I feel like if she hadn't taken me so high, there wouldn't have been as far to fall. If I had said, "Ugh, this move sucks and it's not gonna get better," then at least things wouldn't be so disappointing. Like if you go into a movie with super low expectations, you usually enjoy the film more.

In general, this is my philosophy. I don't like to get excited about things or hope for things because I feel like I'm just setting myself up for disappointment. Gabe tries to convince me that hope is a good thing, but I don't feel that. Past Me did, apparently, and she was indubitably healthier than I am, so maybe she and Gabe are right. Maybe it's Present Me that has the problem.

(I mean, I don't think any of us doubt that.)

On the whole, I would say maybe I'm doing better lately than I have been. I mean, I did write a couple of super hopeful new year posts less than a month ago (here and here).

Gah, why can't I hold onto to attitudes like that? It's so frustrating.

I think I would've been fine if I hadn't read that post from four years ago. I don't think I realized how far removed I was from the girl and attitude that wrote "My Fourth Heartbreak." Maybe it's like feeling good about your fitness journey and then seeing a picture of yourself from years ago when you were far healthier and being like, "Oh, great. Never mind. I'm definitely still fat."

Sigh. You can't relive the past (Gatsby). You can either run from it, or learn from it (Lion King). All we can do is choose what to do with the time that is given to us (Lord of the Rings.)

Maybe I need to stop reading old blog posts. Maybe I just need to focus on my life now. After all, there is no Past Me anyway. There's only Now Me.

~Stephanie

* I'm genuinely so thankful for the friends I'm getting closer to these days; y'all know who you are. I don't know how to reconcile the genuine joy and gratitude I feel for y'all with what I'm also feeling about having to move and life in general. How can two such opposite feelings exist at once?

** So dramatic. My life isn't a W I L D E R N E S S. How can I even say that with how many good things are going on?!

Souls and Poetry

I don't know that I can say I love poetry. I'm not one of those people who can curl up with a book of poems and just read them for a block of time. If that's what has to be true for me to say "I love poetry," then no, I don't.

But there are certain poems that I absolutely love, in the way I love some songs, in the way I love some people. A love that makes my chest feel full, like my heart is physically swelling with warmth and I'm overwhelmed with the intensity of the feeling.

It's moments like this that I am most convinced we're eternal beings. I can feel that I'm incapable of holding all that there is to feel; something inside me is spilling over into a dimension I don't have full access to yet. Poetry stretches the veil thin enough that I can know there's a Beyond, even if I can't live there yet.

As Gabe left the apartment today, we were trading versions of "I love you" and I was reminded of the sign he painted me for Christmas a few years ago. It's a picture of our souls intertwining, based on a poem I wrote about him in college where I described his soul as being green and gold. That reminded me:

"You know the Robert Frost poem about green and gold?" I asked.

He said he didn't think so.

"Nature's first green is gold?" I prompted. "Her hardest hue to hold? Her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour?"

"Dang," he said, gathering keys and wallet. "You know a lot of it."

"I do," I said, just as surprised. "It's not very long. It mentions Eden later. You'd really like it."

We kissed and I had to Google the poem after he'd left.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Something Magical happens toward the end of Frost's poems. I'm only very familiar with four, and I love all of them very much, and all of them get me somewhere in their last half/last third. I don't know if it's something Frost did on purpose or if the lines I like just happen to fall in that region.

In "Nothing Gold Can Stay," it's the leaf subsiding to leaf that gets me. There's a turn there. The first four lines are about beginning...but then it's not the beginning anymore. Beginnings don't last forever. Eventually they become middles, and then eventually, they become ends.

Nothing gold can stay.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, surrounded by dishes that needed to be put into the dishwasher, I looked up "The Road Not Taken," and that one made me cry.

It was five particular lines that got lodged in my throat this time, and although they were consecutive, they weren't part of the same stanza.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

There's something so beautiful and so sad and so true there. The lines are filled with yearning and nostalgia and regret and contentment and wisdom. I don't even want to touch them with my thoughts out loud. They just make me cry, and if they make you cry too, it's in a slightly different way. I think poetry speaks to the soul, and everyone's soul is unique. No two people can love a poem in exactly the same way.

I'm so excited for the dimension where I can feel all of what poetry makes me feel.

You know what, yeah—I can say I love poetry.

~Stephanie

P.S. Here are the other two Robert Frost poems I love so much.

"Fire and Ice"
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.