White Picket Fence

Old movies do it best.

Imagine this: You're outside at a park, watching a film that is being projected on a huge screen 40 feet in front of you in the  middle of the night. Your significant other is on your right, and you both are laying back on a small picnic blanket while the stars shimmer above your head, and the soft whispers of other couples make their way around your ears. Old movies at the park are your favorite.

The film pans, in slow motion, across a cookie cutter neighborhood, with beautiful trees on either side of the street. The camera moves in on a family laughing with their neighbors over the white picket fence that divides the two incredible homes. You are so taken by the beautiful film, you almost dont hear me scoff from about five feet away from your picnic blanket.

But i did. Scoff, i mean.

Call me modern, but i hate the idea of a "white picket fence". Mostly because i have LIVED that way.

I am not talking about the idea people in the sixties and seventies had about living the "american dream" and getting their home in the suburbs. Im talking about the common misconception of a "white picket" lifestyle.

I may be a bit more adventurous then your average young lady, but one thing that drives me nuts are the people that are afraid to try anything.

We are not called to be motionless. And we definitely aren’t called to perfection.

I dare you to move. 

Those white walls, though beautifully decorated WILL come crashing down on your head, that planted grass will poison your step. Those laughing neighbors will betray you because at the end of the day - it is your neck before theirs.

And behind the thick wood, inside closed doors you know you're life isn't the perfect that you allowed it to seem.

I don't want to scare anyone. That is not my intention- to each their own, and to each their home. 

But realistically, the sky is not always the pretty shade of blue we paint it to be. Sometimes the skies turn grey. And that beautiful paved rode we have been driving on turns muddy. 

Fog blurs our vision.

This was my life, for the last year .

Like a mislead old movie, I put up this front- I lead people to believe I lived a perfect life, when behind closed doors, I was slowly crashing.

I took a mental picture of what was happening, and distorted the image until it matched an expectation I assumed others held.

"shes young"

"she has her own apartment"

"she has a loving boyfriend"

"she even has a pet"

"her parents love her"

"she does great in school"

"she graduated early"

"she has three jobs, and is a manager"

"AND she is joining the navy!"

Day in and day out came claims of jealousy. People admitting to wanting my life- with no shame.

Others bragged about knowing me, laughing as they retold my jokes, and narrated my life stories.

THAT GIRL WAS NOT ME.

My parents had to help me out of that apartment that i couldnt afford, my boyfriend had cheated and did so multiple times before i ever knew, my dog was CRAZY and destroyed that apartment i could not afford, i graduated early...like ninety percent of my class because our counselors were on top of it, i never had three jobs in all- i had one job, quit, got another one, quit, got another one and kept it. I was a terrible manager. Terrible.

My grades were not good, because i stopped trying when i decided to join the navy.

...then i dropped out of the navy.

 So there is that.

I thought I was suppose to live a certain way, and meet certain expectations.

My beautiful life, surrounded by my white picket fence was only protecting the inside of a destroyed home on a muddy road. There was a mess where my life should have been, for a long time.

And only recently have I changed to something better.
Only recently have I let myself BE myself.

Only recently have I stopped trying to deceive.  

I am not ashamed of who i have been, or who i am now. Im not ashamed of what i have and have not accomplished. (for there are many of both.)

 I am ashamed because i let myself be defined by the assumptions of others in the fear that i would otherwise not matter, and would otherwise be forgotten.

A wise man once said that we cannot not be defined by our failures.

I disagree.

We can absolutely be defined by our failures, if not our failures then what? what makes us who we are? what teaches us what we have to learn out of a classroom, and out of our homes.

If not failures what influences us to grow, what pushes us to be stronger.

We can absolutely be defined by our failures. Absolutely.

But we are defined by our accomplishments as well. We are defined for our approach to all problems, all defeats. We are defined in the way we treat others. We are defined by the strength in which we fight, the speed in which we respond, and ABSOLUTELY. ABSOLUTELY.

we are defined by our failures.

But we do not have to become our failures.

I guess what i am saying is this:

That "white-picket" lifestyle is beautiful. It is a concept of perfection that we as humans know we cannot meet otherwise. It is an object of jealousy..

but it is tiring. and NOT worth it.

Be who you are.

There is an unspoken beauty in chaos.

We dont have to have it all together- we dont have to be perfect. 

And above all, we don’t have to be afraid of letting people see past those white-picket fences into a disrupted home, a crazy, chaotic, mixed up home- because at the end of the day

Who we are is made by who we’ve been.