Finding Ourselves

The other day on my personal facebook account I wrote this: “Living back out here I have found a huge part of me that started getting lost many years ago when we moved to WA :-) It's nice to have it back. :-)”

            But what does that mean?  And what part of yourself did you lose?

            Well, let me step back a second and explain something.  I was born here in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Yes, it’s a desert.  Yes, it’s dry here and we have droughts year round.  Yes, there are few trees or lawns and we have rock yards full of desert plants.  But you know, what? I LOVE it!  I love it more than any other place I’ve seen or been to—in fact I prefer this.  

             Are you thinking I am crazy?  Probably, but have you ever been here to the “Land of Enchantment”?  There’s something about it.  Something that strikes a chord in most people who visit here, many of them afterwards wish to come back and live here—and many do!  Especially this part of NM...because there really are some ugly parts haha...

            Well, I spent the first 10 years of my life here (minus about 9 months that I lived in New Orleans as a little girl).  And I loved it!  We played outside all day every day it seemed like.  Our dog killed our backyard grass and so all there was was dirt, but my dad built us a cool damn and mountains out of the dirt and we would run the hose for hours making rivers and playing with our toys in it (as an adult I would love to know how much my parents water bill was every month haha).  New Mexico is hot—we often have a few weeks that are up in the 100s, but an average summer day is between 87-94—perfect.  And it’s not like 90 degrees would feel like in Louisiana.  No, it’s dry, there is no humidity, so it feels a lot cooler and you aren’t all wet and sticky.  I HATE humidity.  Denver was too humid for me even!  

            And the autumn in NM is GORGEOUS!  The beautiful cottonwoods (which are my favorite) the line the bosque and streets turn an amazing yellow!  Oh, you haven’t seen anything like it until you go down to the river and see the gorgeous blue haze of the Sandia Mountains hovering over the golden yellow of the cottonwoods on the Rio Grande river.  It’s breathtaking.  And the winters here?  Wonderful.  It rarely gets colder than the 30s/20s and we hardly have snow.  But we get enough snow to fulfill kids dreams of building snowmen.  And many days of the winter we don’t even need coats...just sweaters...and I LOVE sweater weather!

And the Sandia are gorgeous mountains...the sunsets reflcting on them are always pink...sometimes bright sometime pale, but that is where they get their name.  Sandia is spanish for Watermelon...the Watermelon mountains...how gorgeous!

            I LOVE it here.  But soon after my 10^th birthday in about April, 1997 we moved to a little sleepy, wet town in Washington state, minutes from the Canadian border and even closer to the coast.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  Ferndale is a lovely town, with lovely people, and it’s gorgeous and green.  But the people there are different…the landscapes are different…the weather is different…and it rains…all the time.  In fact it’s a lot like that place Bella moves to in Twilight…gosh, I don’t know they name of the town (I've only read part of the first book and seen the movies each once), but it’s the same.  Only rainier than the movies show it.  I mean it rains ALL THE TIME.  Some machine in Seattle once measured how much sun shone through in 90 days (and that included little second bursts of sunlight through the clouds, however brief).  THREE HOURS.  That’s it.  Three hours total in 90 days.  Yuck.  No one dresses nice there either.  I don’t think this matters to most people and many times I think people would prefer it nowadays.  But when you wear a sweater and jeans to school and people ask why you are all dressed up…that’s a bit weird and kind of sad.  But when the average Ferndale student wears their pj bottoms or sweats to school, that’s what you get...I'm was odd I guess. 

And I really am not dissing on Ferndale.  I loved it.  It gave me many opportunities I would not have had here—especially where school is involved.  I have many dear friends and families there who touched my soul and brought a lot to my life.  But even through the fun and finding new loves, hobbies etc…over the eight years we lived there I slowly lost a part of myself.

And through college in Idaho, and our few years in Colorado, it completely vanished. Do I know exactly what that part of myself was?

Honestly?  Not really.  All I know, is yesterday while driving through the slopping mesa, under the bluest of blue skies, which the prettiest and most unique puffy white clouds, with a complete view of the beautiful Sandia Mountains from highest peak to lowest foothill, and listening to the Dixie Chick’s “Wide Open Spaces”, it hit me.  I had found a part of myself—a feeling I hadn’t had in many, many years. And suddenly I felt almost whole again.  (I say almost, because there are a few things I’ve realized I am missing in my life like music, singing, acting etc that I still need to add) but that is the closest to whole I have felt in many years…the most recent moments like before this where when I was 16 of 17, and they were very brief moments where I was living in a world of music and performance which is also a huge piece of my soul—that’s the part that is still missing right now.

But I think that driving through town feeling is one of the biggest pieces of my soul—of who I am.  And it sure feels good to have it back.  And I think, that I will make sure I slow down in life and remind myself of it.  That’s part of why I am writing this.  To help remind myself.  And to tell you, that if you are feeling anything but whole—like you are missing some part of yourself…go find it!  Keep searching!  Trust me, to make it through this crazy world of stress, frustration, disappointment, heartache (you name it) we need all of ourselves.  And I won't lie, it's a constant, constant battle, but it's worth it.