I am in a strange season of life. I feel like I am in the middle of a great ocean. I've lost sight of shore, and I have no idea which direction to go. I'm floating, paralyzed by fear of making the wrong decision, and the fog is coming in. I feel pressed in on all sides.
"Courage, dear heart," my soul whispers, but it isn't enough. I look backwards to where I came from to find the Melissa I have seemed to have lost.
Looking back on my life, I was always very quiet, introspective, and very emotional. Although I wasn't outwardly expressive, it was all deeply internal and came out in my art and writing. I spent my childhood exploring the woods and the pastures and the little creeks around our house, writing stories, drawing, daydreaming, sitting in trees reading books, and snuggling the animals on the farm. I had two favorite places, and both allowed me to be in the midst of life, but not visible: the hayloft in the barn and the treehouse on the wide, rolling lawn facing the pond. Nestled in the arms of the branches, all around me millions of shades of green, my place in the tree was perfect peace.
When we sold the farm and moved to California, I was devastated. I couldn't say goodbye, so I shut everything out and focused on the future. I opened myself to new adventures and possibilities and did everything that was just scary enough to grow my courage muscles: I joined a swim team my first year in college and later won the California Female Pepsi Scholar Athlete of the Year Award (which only one female junior college athlete can win in California). I then finished my last two years of college at UCLA, where I joined the UCLA Outdoor Adventure Club as a way to stay connected to nature (backcountry kayaking Lake Powell/backpacking Death Valley). I applied for a highly competitive creative writing major emphasis track and was accepted; I loved the literature courses of my major (pirate literature, science fiction, Victorian, Gothic, especially). I worked my butt off, and graduated with highest honors. The world seemed to open up wider and wider: I studied abroad in Ireland, explored Scotland, England, and Wales, moved to Taiwan and taught English to children for one year, and later moved to Australia for graduate school for two years.
After all of that traveling and school, I ended up in Monterey. I had my dream job writing and editing educational materials for National Geographic Learning. Then, I got laid off after two years, and spent the next three years cobbling together a working life that allowed me to barely scrape by financially. I was fighting so hard to stay in the area, but life kept pruning my roots until I questioned if I was actually meant to be in Monterey; feelings of failure and doubt were shadows I couldn't shake.
The anchor that kept me in Monterey the past five years, throughout the National Geographic job saga, temp job saga, property management job saga, and high school Chemistry and English teacher saga, was the ocean...and the Ohana I found because of the ocean.
What was it about the ocean that a farm girl from Missouri connected to?
What was it about the ocean that a farm girl from Missouri connected to?
The same feeling I had as a kid, sitting in the tree while watching storm clouds pile up, running as fast as I could down pasture hills in the warm, spring rain, and watching life from the warmth of the barn -- that same peace of belonging and peace of my true nature -- I finally found again when I would paddle out on the ocean, sit on my SUP or watercraft, and just...be.
There is a strange wildness in my heart that paddling on the ocean has brought out, or maybe that wildness and savage courage was always there, and was just too shy to come forth. I feel my Viking ancestors in my blood when I paddle down steep waves, chase the horizon, and feel the push and pull of the wind, tangling my hair into knots even as it untangles the knots in my soul.
I haven't been able to paddle for two months now due to an injury, and that time away has forced me to express my inward feelings in paintings, poetry, and piano compositions. I don't understand the intense drive to express feelings, but no painting, poem, or piano song ever can. It is almost a desperate attempt to reach self-awareness and crying out for someone else to see me, too, and to understand and draw close.
So, I look back on the crazy weaving of the tapestry of my life, and I see a Melissa who has pushed herself every step of the way, to be brave, to let go of what is not meant to be, to find peace, belonging, and purpose.
This season of life has brought a challenge that no external movement can cure. This season of my life is a deep journey into my soul. To find meaning, balance, identity, purpose, peace, and passion. What makes me "me"? Who am I supposed to be moving forward? How do I find and embrace this new bud of a Melissa? Should I continue to fight to stay in Monterey?
