Marrying Too Young

J and I got married when he was 22 and I was 21. Within a month we became prime examples of why 21 and 22 are too early to get married. Even with all the planning ahead we did ahead of time we were able to find our selves in shockingly unexpected circumstances and struggling to figure out how to manage our own personal problems while learning how to be married at the same time.

J and I spent the summer apart. His experiences that summer showed him that he would never be able to be part of the army and have a clean contentious at the same time. My summer showed me that my college major was not my passion. These lessons would have been hard enough to deal with in their own right but we were dealing with them and trying to figure out what they meant for our marriage. Both of us spent far too much time trying to "suck it up" because we knew the other was depending on us. It made us both miserable. We were each at points in our lives in which we really needed to be selfish, but we had also essentially given up that right. We made it work because we truly do love each other, but it was far from easy and, to be honest, it was probably not healthy for us either.

I am thinking about this now because I am finding my emotional self at odds with my married self. I have a broken collar bone and I have been pushing my body to do things it's not ready to do because WE need the money. I'm angry because I wonder if I would have been better off graduating on time and utilizing the resources the college had available to help me find an internship. I'm frustrated because career wise an internship would be better than a job, by money wise a job would be better than an internship. Newly graduated me needs an internship and married me needs a job. I would love to find something that could work as both but that's not an easy thing to find.

I want to be clear, I do not blame J, to be honest I do not blame myself either. Neither of us could have known better. I don't regret marrying J, although I wish I had waited longer and taken some time to worry about myself and no one else. I have made a promise to myself to allow myself to make decisions based on my best interest. J does that anyway.

 He always talks to me about decisions but I think we default to what is best for him. Again, I'm not assigning blame. I think he has been conditioned to look out for his own needs and I have been conditioned to look out for the needs of the people I love so we both tend to choose what's best for J. This is an example of how a few years of singlehood (completely made up word) would have done me a lot of good. Learning how to decide what is in my own best interest is going to be hard skill to hone within a marriage.

 I am thankful because I know J loves me and I know that he will support decisions that are in my best interest even when they are not ideal for him. However, it is not good for him to be chasing my dreams instead of his. My point in this is that I am not "suffering" alone. We both are going to struggle to grow individually within our marriage. the good news is we made it through a ridiculous struggle during the first two years, and if that's any indicator we will continue to grow together.

Oklahoma

This is not a poem about how I feel about Oklahoma, it's a poem about how I felt about a very specific place at a very specific time. It is another one I wrote out of a writing prompt. I wanted to write about something else but this was therapeutic.

Oklahoma 2009

I have no roots here.

I know if the right wind blows

(and it threatens to every day,)

I will simply blow away.

The winds are relentless;

the clay is indifferent.

The insects have taken over.

Survival is based on luck;

this place is not designed for life.

The sky is too close, threatening to fall.

We have no Mount Olympus and the

invaders mock the gods.

The sun is too hot;

the rain is too scarce.

No one treats this land as holy.

The colors are matte

And what else would they be?

If everything is threatened here

what will protect me?

I took these pictures in 2009 in Oklahoma.

Nightmares/ Adjustments and Who Knows

I know that MA is a much better place for me to be living but I really hate adjustments. Right now I feel guilty and stupid about every decision I make. I have nightmares EVERY SINGLE night and I just can't shake them. It makes waking up stressful and I've waken up with a killer headache every single morning since I moved. I am depressed over Grampa, scared and depressed about where I am with my life and I am intimidated about what the heck my next moves will be. Ugh I hate this.

Thoughts, 21 days

Ugh, I'm sleepy, but now that I've started this habit it's impossible to sleep without it. (Which is both good and bad.)I'm going to try to get this out quick and I'll deal with punctuation later.

First of all I love that I am getting over the misplacement of my anger issues with the army. I still have a long way to go and will still avoid the shortest line in Wal-Mart if it means I would have to stand next to someone in uniform, but it's not affecting how I get to know people. Essentially it is still affecting my view of passing strangers, but not affecting my ability to get to know somebody. I have met a few people recently who I genuinely like to have military careers that leave them fulfilled and I am able to see them as decent human begins even good, albeit flawed, people. (But who among us is not flawed?) I have found more peace than I have ever expected to gain and I am so grateful for that lifted burden.

Secondly I have been making peace with a lot of past frustration. This peace stems from an incident, but it's not important to name that incident. Basically I have been realizing that I expect everyone to approach problems with a similiar mind set and skill set as my own. Obviously that's not going to happen. What's more is I've been engaging in the useless practice of giving people advice that I had to learn the hard way. It is the most pointless venture I can imagine. It's like giving a 13 year old a high school diploma and expecting to be able to survive in college. The paper is meaningless without the work it took to earn it.

I'm not saying that people never listen, but a lot of the time I feel like I am giving them extremely valuable information, that they are not mentally ready to use yet because they haven't had the experience to prepare themselves mentally. I am so totally rambling.

Lastly, I'm over my self righteousness about what I did for myself and what I went without. I have realized that everyone is a victim of their circumstance and I shouldn't judge people based on theirs anymore than I would want to be judged based on mine. Actually the one thing I am going to mis about the culture out here is the socioeconomic culture. I feel much more at comfortable and middle class than I ever did or probably will at home. My mind is still going 90 miles an hour but I'm done typing now. Goodnight.

Untitled

Relived some angry points in my life today, but then realized how little it all matters. I'm trying to live in the moment and live day to day because I'd hate to be one of those people who spends there life waiting for it to begin. My biggest desire is to move past the anger.