I Found Myself In This Bar

"I found myself in this bar Making mistakes and making new friends I was growing up and nothing made sense Learning how to live with a broken heart I found myself in this bar..." When I first heard Morgan Wallen sing these lyrics in his song, "This Bar," I didn't think he was talking about a literal bar. I interpreted "this bar" to mean any place that helps shape who a person is, and for me, two places have helped shape me into the person I am today: the neighborhood I grew up in on the Southside of Chicago and the first university I attended. 1.) The neighborhood I grew up in on the Southside of Chicago: I think it's pretty much the norm for a person's hometown to play a major role in who they turn out to be. It's where they took their first steps, said their first word, learned how to form their own opinions, and so on. It's where they (hopefully) were taught right from wrong by whoever was raising them or at least taught themselves based on their experiences. It's where they first had to learn (sometimes the hard way) how to navigate the world. Personally, I think that probably about seventy percent of who I am is because of the neighborhood I grew up in -- the place where it seemed like when I was a kid, I was making a new "best friend" every year in grammar school usually based on who was in my homeroom class that year. It was the place where sometimes, I tried to be friends with the wrong group of people. When I was in sixth grade, I fell into the trap of wanting to be popular (I was a nerd but didn't want to accept that I was), and I tried to be friends with The Cool Kids. I did everything I thought I was supposed to do: I wore black socks to school and put my hair in a side ponytail, because that's what The Cool Girls did. It was hard to keep up, though, and it seemed like I could never do anything right. I didn't always have black socks to wear, and in fact, my sock drawer was filled with mostly white socks -- uncool. I didn't know that there was a certain way to wear your hair in a side ponytail and that if you wore your hair to the right, it meant that "you were a lesbian" -- uncool. I didn't know what a tampon was because I was a late bloomer who wouldn't actually end up getting her period until she was seventeen, so I didn't even know what a tampon was supposed to be used for -- uncool. I just wanted to fit in and to feel like I belonged, but I didn't and couldn't. I don't remember at what point in the year I stopped trying to hang out with them, but I can guess that they left me out of their plans enough times for me to eventually just give up. When seventh grade rolled around, I became "best friends" with a girl in my homeroom, and she introduced me to her group of friends, The Semi-Cool Kids. These girls remained my friends until probably around our junior year of high school. I remember that I always used to turn down their invitations to hang out on Friday nights, because I had cross country meets on Saturday mornings, and I wanted to make sure I was well-rested (I was very serious about cross country at the time). When it came to Saturday nights, however, I always made sure to text them to see what their plans were for the night. One day, it seemed that instead of continuing to include me in their plans, they'd tell me they'd "let me know" where they were once they figured it out... but then they never did. I knew they all hung out together, though, because I would see the pictures they would post on Facebook. It's weird to think back to when I was sixteen and try to analyze the reasoning for this, but I think it can be pinpointed to one night during the summer before our junior year of high school. Back then, the "cool" thing to do was to buy a lawn seat ticket and to go to country concerts. Make no mistake: the purpose of going to these concerts wasn't to listen to country music; the "cool" things to do were firstly to find an of-aged person to buy you alcohol and secondly to make out with at least one stranger. I had wanted to be "cool," but being the goody-two-shoes, naive, and scared sixteen-year-old girl that I was, I wasn't interested in doing either of these things. For me, alcohol was bad, and boys were scary. Unlike most of my friends, I actually wanted to listen to the music. It was at one of these concerts that one of my friends drank too much and passed out, and when Security came around and we couldn't wake her up, the Paramedics had to be called to take her away to The Drunk Tent on a stretcher. Trying to be a good friend, I walked behind the Paramedics with three other friends to make sure she was okay. One of my older brother's friends was at that concert. Seeing me walking behind the Paramedics carrying my passed out, drunk friend on a stretcher, he texted my older brother who obviously told my parents, because when I got home that night, my parents sat me down and asked me to tell them what happened. There wasn't really any way to lie about it (how do you say, "My friends weren't underage drinking," even though you were clearly seen with your friend who drank so much she was unresponsive?), so I was forced to tell them the truth. Knowing I was Miss Goody-Two-Shoes and not wanting to risk me telling on them again, my friends stopped inviting me to their hangouts. While I imagine they were all together drinking, laughing, and having a good time, I was by myself on my parents' couch, usually re-watching a movie I had seen at least twice before. I tried not to let it affect me too much, especially because I was really good friends with a girl on the cross country team, so when my grammar school friends stopped wanting to be my friends, I started hanging out with her more. We were "best friends," and when she started dating a boy from the all-boys high school near our high school, we started to get invited to the parties of all his friends. Even though there was drinking going on at these parties and I didn't drink, I was still included, and I felt like I belonged again. My efforts to not let being left out of my old friends' plans affect me too much were futile, however, and I think that's when my depression and anxiety first really started. During the winter of our senior year, I told my "best friend" about how I'd been feeling, and initially, she was pretty supportive. She went to our guidance counselor and asked him for help, and I started talking with him during certain class periods every so often. Eventually, I think she got sick of always having to listen to me talk about how sad I was. I can't remember when it exactly happened, but one day, she told me that being my friend was "too much" for her and that I "always expected her to drop everything" to talk to me. We didn't exactly stop being friends per say, but it was clear that things were not the same and that we were no longer "best friends" -- by the end of that final year in high school, the year that was supposed to be the best one out of the four, I stood by myself to throw my graduation cap up in the air as I watched everyone else around me throw theirs up with their friends. I know I did this to myself, in a way, because I could have easily gone by my other good friend from the cross country team and her other friends... but they all had been on The Math Team, and I wasn't; I wasn't even smart enough to be in the Honors and AP Math classes like they were, so I knew I wouldn't have felt like I belonged anyway. I couldn't wait to leave for college, because it meant being two hours away from the place that held all the painful memories (most within the past couple years) that I wanted to forget. It meant the opportunity to have a clean slate and to meet new friends. It meant getting to be whoever I wanted to be and getting to decide who that was.

2.) The first university I attended: Unfortunately, you can take the girl out of the neighborhood, but you can't take the neighborhood out of the girl. Because I was on the cross country and track teams, I had made a lot of new friends; one of my favorite things about being on a team was the feeling that you were a part of something, and I loved feeling like I had a place and like I knew where I belonged. The problem was that I was really homesick, and I was very scared that these new friends would reject me, too, so I spent a lot of time in my dorm room isolating myself. It didn't help that my roommate and teammate, a girl who should have been my "best friend," never wanted to invite me when she would go to hang out with the guys on the team who were our age. It didn't help that she only wanted to hang out with me, it seemed, when she didn't have a better offer. It didn't help that when she found out about my depression and anxiety, she stopped wanting to hang out with me altogether.

The best way to summarize my first two years at that first university would be to say that it was filled with A LOT of sadness and anger, and the beginning of my junior year wasn't any better. I decided to leave the cross country and track teams after my junior year cross country season ended; I finally accepted that my heart wasn't in the sport anymore. I asked my coach if I could be the team manager so I could still help out at meets and be around my friends, but things weren't the same, and I once again felt like I didn't really belong. I know I shouldn't have felt like this or cared too much about the people who didn't want to be friends with me, especially because I had two other good friends on the team who were really there for me; they went with me to one of my therapy sessions to help me to talk to my therapist about how I was at rock bottom, encouraged me to go to the psychiatric hospital, and went to the hospital to visit me and make sure I was okay. But I did care, because even though I finally had friends who finally accepted me despite my problems, there were still the ones who didn't. Medically withdrawing from the university for the semester and going to the psychiatric hospital was supposed to fix everything. Taking time off to focus on trying to get better was supposed to be the answer to all my problems. In reality, though, it only made things better for a short time, and looking back on it now, I should've just transferred home after that first semester of my junior year. I shouldn't have tried to "suck it up" and stay there... but I did, because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. When I re-enrolled the following semester, I wasn't the same student or even the same person I used to be. I skipped classes, slept too much instead of doing homework or studying, and came dangerously close to failing a couple of my classes. I left parties very early or sometimes didn't even go at all because almost everyone at those parties was on the cross country and track teams, and I no longer felt "a part of something" -- I just felt like an outcast. I drove home at the end of almost every week to be with my family, and when the weekend would end and I would have to drive back to school, I used to wait until as late as I could on Sunday night because I didn't want to go back. I think it was probably around late-October or early-November of that semester when during a phone call with my dad, he said, "Magz, you can just come home." Hearing that was kind of like a weight being lifted off my shoulders, because even though I knew I didn't need "permission" to transfer back home, it was like being told, "It's okay that you don't want to stay there." Knowing I would be transferring home at the end of the semester was my motivation to pull my grades back up, and when the semester ended, so did my time at that university. Even though transferring back home was what I needed to do for my mental health, it meant leaving behind the friends I had there. It meant returning to The Neighborhood I Grew Up In that held all the painful memories from high school that I tried to escape, the place where I had only one friend, the good friend from high school who had been on The Math Team and who couldn't always hang out because she had a boyfriend and a full-time job (in other words, she had her own life, and I never wanted her to feel like she had to "drop everything" for me). It meant having to attend a brand-new university to finish up my degree -- a university that was a half mile from my parents' house -- and feeling like the "new kid." It meant finding a new job as a hostess at a restaurant near my parents' house where I was constantly pushed waaaay outside my comfort zone every day. It meant starting over... again. That new job turned out to be very good for me, because even though it was pretty terrifying and every day was a challenge, it was there that I met two new friends. One of these friends always tried to invite me to hang out with her outside of work, but I always declined because I was scared. When I finally put my fears aside and actually went out with her and her friends, I realized that there was no reason for me to feel nervous, because she accepted me for who I was. She made me feel included again, which was something I had really wanted since transferring home. It was also something I had desperately needed, because since transferring home, I had decided to enter the dating world. I was twenty-two and I had never been a real date, so when I started putting myself out there on Tinder and Bumble, having someone other than my high school friend to talk to about how confusing guys are (and about how no one else seemed to be looking for the same connection and love that I was) helped me to figure it all out.

Even after she left the restaurant to work a different job, we still remained close, and it was clear that she cared and wanted to be there for me through both the highs and the lows of my life. The day I graduated college, she took me out to dinner. Even though I didn't know her other friends, she continued to invite me to hang out with them because she never wanted me to feel left out. When I got my heart broken by the guy who ended things with me via text message while I was away on a work trip, she took me out for drinks on the night I returned home to help take my mind off of him... and when I met a new guy (Adam ☺) five months later, she hung out with us quite a few times to see what kind of guy he was and how we were together because she wanted to make sure that I would be okay in a relationship this time around. And so, it is in The Neighborhood That I Grew Up In and at The First University I Attended that I found myself making mistakes (many, many, many mistakes) and making new friends. It is in both of these places that I grew up, and it is in both of these places where nothing ever seemed to make sense as I tried to navigate the world. It is in both of these places that I had to learn how to live with different kinds of broken hearts. It is in these places that I discovered that I love to draw, paint, bake, read, and write, and these places helped shape me into who I am: the overly sensitive, very intense girl whose feelings were sometimes too much for people. They taught me that I am a girl who knows how to grieve hard, but I also know that I can love hard. The other day, the same friend who I met at the restaurant where we both used to work said that grief and love are very similar; she makes a very good point, and it immediately reminded me of a poem I read last week called "Against Distance" by Trey Moody. One of the last lines of the poem is "I heard that grief is only love with nowhere to go," which I think means that grief only happens when the love that is or was present doesn't have anything tangible (i.e. a person) to hold on to anymore -- it has nowhere to go, and so it turns into grief. By definition, grief is the anguish experienced after significant loss. In the places where I learned who I am, I lost so many friends who I thought were supposed to be there "forever," and I lost a couple guys at one time or another who I thought were supposed to stick around for a lot longer than they did. In experiencing these losses, however, I found that I know how to help and care about people, despite people not always doing the same for me; I know how to show this care in ways that I can only hope make people feel like they matter in all the ways that I never felt like I did. In experiencing these losses, I found that I really do have so much love to give -- it just took the right guy coming into my life to prove that there wasn't anything wrong with me for always wanting and looking for connection and love, that I was actually very normal for wanting these things. In experiencing these losses, I found that they weren't actually losses, because losing those people made more room for the amazing people who are in my life today. Even though it's still hard to this day to convince myself of, I know deep down that it was their loss, not mine. I know the kind of person I am and the kind of heart that I have, and just because so many people have rejected me throughout my life, that doesn't mean that I'm worthless or that there's something wrong with me. Sometimes it really isn't you -- it really is the other person -- and sometimes they're not ready or able to meet you where you're at... and that's okay. I know my fear of rejection is never going to fully leave me, but I also know that I'm healing from it (even if that healing is slow, and even if that healing isn't linear). In Morgan Wallen's song, "This Bar," one of the final lines he sings is "Ain't it strange the things you keep tucked in your heart? " For me, I keep both the good and bad things tucked in my heart: The Good Things: - Playing Just Dance and Mario Bros on Wii with my younger sister for hours on end because we genuinely enjoyed each other's company, and the world and our experiences hadn't yet taken away our innocence - Laughing so hard and so loud in my old grammar school friend's basement at sleepovers that her parents would have to come down and tell us to PLEASE go to sleep - All the solo runs I would go on in high school where running felt effortless; I felt so fast, like I was flying - My mom taking me to buy me a new pair of running shoes or racing spikes whenever the pair I had been running in got too worn out - Baking cupcakes (whether it was by myself or with a friend) - Going to Target with my old high school friend during Christmastime, buying a gingerbread house, and putting it together in the food court area - Being an alternate for the conference meet during my freshman year cross country season at the first university I attended, because even though I had a rough start to the season, I proved to myself that hard work pays off and that I was good enough to compete at the D1 level - Singing along to "All Night Longer" by Sammy Adams and "All the Small Things" by Blink-182 whenever they'd blast it at parties - All the canvases I used to paint for my old cross country teammates/friends - Sitting at the bar with my dad that he had helped build in the garage at my parents' house and listening to some of the best life advice I'll ever receive (even though I didn't always successfully follow it) after I had transferred back home - Receiving my college diploma, because even though it took me two universities, four and a half years, and a lot of tears, I DID IT - Moving into my parents' basement after my older brother moved out of it because he had bought a house and buying myself a full-sized bed (up until that point, I had only ever slept in a twin-sized bed) - Hanging out in the backyard of my older brother's first house and hearing him tell my younger sister, my little brother, and me that he was going to propose to the love of his life - Picking my little brother up from school on his early dismissal days and taking him to Portillo's for lunch - Getting my first "big girl," salary-paid job and getting comfortable with the (sometimes annoying) commute - Falling in love with Adam and telling him, "I love you" (the first time I had EVER said that to a guy other than my dad and brothers) after only about three weeks of dating... and hearing him immediately say it back - Every Southside Irish Parade Day: wearing the green Irish sweater my parents gave me for my twenty-first birthday, eating a Reuben sandwich and "cheesy potatoes," trying my best to drink a Guinness (why does it taste kind of like a combination of coffee and pennies?), and just genuinely having a good time with my family - Telling my parents that I wanted to move out and buy a house with Adam - Packing up my stuff and moving out of my parents' basement, the place that had been my room for the past two years - Saying goodbye to my parents' house where I had lived for twenty-five and a half years, because even though saying goodbye was sad, I knew it wasn't really a goodbye -- it was a "see you later" The Bad Things: - My grammar school "boyfriend" breaking up with me because I was "prude" and was too scared to kiss him... and then watching as he proceeded to try to date almost every single one of my other friends - Getting called a "surfboard" by the boys when I was in eighth grade because I didn't have any boobs... and being made fun of because my forehead and my teeth were too big - Sitting alone on my parents' couch on Saturday nights in high school, trying not to look at my phone, and wishing my old grammar school friends would call to invite me out with them... and then feeling like I got slapped in the face when I would see the pictures they would post on Facebook from that night - Asking a boy from the all-boys high school near mine who I had a crush on to go to Senior Prom with me and having him say he "needed to think about it"... and later finding out that the only reason he said yes was because the girl from my high school who he had really wanted to go with wasn't going to ask him - Almost deciding to quit track because I didn't want to have to be around my former "best friend" after she told me that being my friend was "too hard" - Throwing my graduation cap up in the air by myself and trying my hardest not to cry, because this was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life... and having to force a smile when my former "best friend" came up to me and asked to get a picture with me - Crying alone in my dorm room my freshman year because of how homesick I was and how lonely I felt - Being told by one of my roommates that the boys' team thought I "tried too hard" at practice and that being an English major basically meant that I wasn't smart enough to be a Science major like she was - Packing up and cleaning out my locker after I decided to leave the cross country and track teams after my junior year cross country season and feeling like a failure - Going to the psychiatric hospital for the first time - Trying to stay at the first university I attended but ultimately realizing that I couldn't - Moving out of my apartment (and having to take way too many trips back home because I had so much stuff) - "Starting over" once I was back home and feeling like I was back at square one - Getting yelled at by angry customers at the restaurant I worked at when I was a hostess because I wasn't seating them fast enough (even though there weren't any available tables) and having to actually run away because I didn't want anyone to see me cry - Going to the psychiatric hospital for the second time - Getting ghosted more times than I want to think about - Finally meeting a guy who I thought was a "good one," but then having the rug ripped out from under me when he broke up with me via text message while I was in a different state two weeks after I told him about my depression and anxiety and four days after he made an Instagram post with a picture of the painting I had made for him for Valentine's Day whose caption was something along the lines of what a "great, talented girlfriend" I was - My dad helping me, drunk and crying about how I missed my very recent ex-boyfriend, to bed on the night I came home from my work trip after I had gone out with my friend to try to take my mind off of the guy - Trying to "get back out there" and start dating again but just getting ghosted some more - Going to the psychiatric hospital for the third time - Feeling so incredibly empty and broken... and wondering why it seemed like I could never get anything right I know that I wrote down more bad things than good things, and I know that I should let go of and try to forget about some of those bad things to make room for more good things... but I also know that my heart is capable of holding a lot, and tucked in my heart are so many more good and bad things than the ones listed above. They all have made me who I am, so even though thinking about all of the bad things is and probably always will be difficult, they all also taught me great lessons: they taught me that I am strong and resilient, that I am able to get back up even after getting knocked down time after time. They taught me that despite all the ugliness and rejection I've experienced, I'm still going to keep pushing forward, and I won't let the cruelness of the world turn me cruel; I'm still going to keep showing kindness to those that I care about -- and even to those I don't care about and who don't necessarily deserve it. Choosing to move away from The Neighborhood I Grew Up In was the smartest decision for me. I had originally wanted to buy a house near my parents' house because it was familiar, but I think that because it will probably always hold a lot of painful memories, trying to raise a family there would have been a bad idea (how do you create a future for yourself if you're still haunted by your past?). When we were first looking at houses on Zillow and Adam suggested we look in Indiana, I jumped at the idea. Living here has been a dream, and even though we're only about forty minutes away from my parents' house, it's enough distance to remind myself that I'm free and that I don't need to be haunted by my past; it's obviously still going to take more time, but I think that one day, I'll be at peace with it all. Until that day, I'll celebrate the small wins: like not being angry anymore at all the old friends I had back then and being able to take a breath instead of always feeling the need to hold it in whenever Adam and I go back to visit The Neighborhood I Grew Up In and my parents' house. My past may have been dark, but my present and future are very bright. xoxo,