life, lately

This is a post I’ve written a million times in my head and actually never put fingers to keyboard. I can’t believe how long my “blog break” turned out to be. Honestly, I didn’t plan to be away that long but I also didn’t plan to ever come back.

Between my last post and today, I’ve lived a lot of life. A 12 year relationship ended. I moved twice. I met a great new guy when I thought I would actually die alone (read: in the Midwest if you’re 30 and unmarried you’re as good as dead. I’m kidding, that’s just a stereotype). I adopted another cat. When I thought my health couldn’t get worse, it sort of did.

When life is hard (so, all the time?) you can learn a lot about yourself. I learned that I’m a lot stronger than I ever thought I was. That things I thought I couldn’t do on my own, like assemble furniture, I can. I learned who my real friends are, as cliche as that sounds, it is very true. I realized that I’m not actually “mean”, but that I carry a lot of hurt and it’s easier for me to push people away then give them the opportunity to leave me. Through all of these seemingly shitty experiences in my 33 short years of life, I now know that to be true to myself means that I am unabashedly authentic.

In the era of Brene Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Glennon Doyle, living your “truth” has become an incredible cliche. Or maybe a cop out? I’m not sure, but it’s everywhere and everyone is “doing” it. I will be the first to raise my hand and say that I am not living my truth or my best life. But I am trying my damnedest to be the best Christin I can be.

What does that mean? I say no to stuff and I don’t feel guilty because if you don’t want to do something there isn’t a rule that you have to do it. I no longer try to be who I think people want me to be because what is more exhausting than hustling for the approval of others who will likely never give it to you? I don’t pretend I’m okay when I’m not, mostly because I don’t have the energy to keep up with acting like things are great. I do what I can do in the hours I’m awake and try not to berate myself about not getting enough done. TL; DR I don’t give my fucks away to things that don’t deserve them.

Unfortunately, this blog became a place not to give a fuck. Not because I didn’t want to. Or because I didn’t love blogging. It was because I couldn’t. I didn’t have the space in my life to do collages and create recipes when I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.

If you’re still reading this I’m sure you’re thinking something like, “Okay, Christin. What the hell does this have to do with your blog? Are you blogging again?”. What I’ve noticed as a woman in 2017 is that a lot of the online community is still trying to sugar coat life. While struggles are shared, they’re seemingly whitewashed and you’re left feeling shittier than before because why the hell can’t I figure life out? They’ve done it! And look, in perfectly styled squares!

That’s not to say those sharing aren’t being authentic or doing their best, but I find it incredibly unhelpful, if not alienating. As a woman, in her (almost) mid-thirties who is unmarried and childless, when all these women are portraying perfect relationships, homes and families, I can’t help but wonder who else feels as terrible as I do when I read it. If you don’t, I envy the shit out of you. If you do, girl, tell me more.

I’m going to blog about the same things I did before. I will still be sarcastic. I will also be honest because life isn’t always great. Sometimes things are horrible, and hard, and messy and that’s normal. Sometimes you just want to watch 20 hours of Bravo and cry in the shower, ya know? Or eat a whole package of double stuffed E.L. Fudge Cookies. This is a judgment free zone.

If you have any questions or posts you’d like to see, please feel free to hit me up however you prefer. And if you read this entire blog post, you get a gold star for the month of November.