Laundry and Life

With my grandparents being out of town, it has given me a lot of time to think. Today, I was doing laundry and thinking about how long it was taking to get 5 loads done. Considering the fact that I hadn't washed clothes all week, I realized that I was actually doing pretty well. Then I remembered back to when I used to live with 5 other people and how much laundry there was all of the time. My (step)dad had a rule that you could never wash just your clothes and that my brother and I should be doing at least two loads of laundry a day. As someone who was very busy as a child, that was an almost impossible task (either running from church function to church function or school event or wherever... any excuse to be running from him). 

I remember feeling so overwhelmed and thinking how miserable having a family of my own would be one day. Who thinks of those things as a child?! I've always been told that I have an old soul and I think that part of that was a necessity (a survival mechanism). But I would be in denial if I did not acknowledge that there were repercussions for being old before my time. One of these repercussions was that my outlook on life was quite bleak. Sure, I put on a happy face and faked it with the best of them. The expectation was that I would never let anyone see me sweat. I was to be "super woman" as my dad put it. Factor in my own struggle with perfectionism and I was a mess. The reality was that I wasn't happy. Yes, I experienced moments of happiness but happiness was definitely not a state of being. 

So, as I was doing my own laundry today and thanking God that it only took 5 loads to finish all of MY own clothes, I began to realize how my world has changed. Two years ago, my parents started getting a divorce. It was awful. If I thought things were bad before, they seemed to get way worse after that. I had always fantasized as a child that my parents would get a divorce and that all would be well. In the past two years, I've often thought, "Well, at least half of the fantasy came true."

But that's just it... all isn't as I would have envisioned it, but I have to admit that I feel like I'm in a much better place and things are starting to feel well in ways that they were never felt before. For the first time in my life, I feel like I've been set free from the bondage that was my childhood. I think it took some time for me to believe that I was really free and that we were never going back... and that I could, in fact, be happy. Over the past two years, those beliefs have been growing into conviction.

This past week or so has been amazing in the fact that I have learned a lot about myself. I've learned that I need to give myself permission to have fun, be happy, and to be successful. For some reason, I have felt like I couldn't go on with my own life, because I didn't want to leave my family behind. That may sound weird, but as warped as my family was/is, they are still my family and I love them. With that came a warped sense of love as well, I now know that I must go on to be healthy, happy, and successful. It is as much for them as it is for me.

Foolishly (and counter-intuitively), I have felt like holding myself back was the answer. But the more I think about it, that doesn't help anyone. In fact, the only person I seem to be hurting the worst is myself. If my family is to ever be well, I must get well first. I cannot and will not carry the burden of fixing them myself, because I cannot and should not. 

There is freedom in those words. A freedom like I have never felt before. And peace. It's been a long journey and I'm sure that it is far from over, but I think I've finally ready to give to God what is God's and to walk away with peace in my heart. 

When the times is right, I am confident that we will all be together again one day. But in the mean time, as Henry David Thoreau put it, I must "go confidently in the direction of [my] dreams [and] live the life [I've] imagined!"