On Not Being Who I Thought I'd Be By Now

Recently I've found myself thinking about my 18 year old self. 

To inspire me, I dug through some old pictures. Here is Kelsey, age 18. ------>
(Note: I look almost exactly the same today and have still never worn a baseball cap well.)

I've been questioning what 18 year old Kelsey would think of the way 24 year old Kelsey is currently living her life. Because 18 year old Kelsey had big plans for her life. She wanted to change the world and change the church and also somehow have gobs of time to spend with all of her friends who just happened to all live in her neighborhood.

But 18 year old Kelsey didn't have bills to pay. She'd never been told no. She only had to think in theory. Her biggest concern was changing her major - again and again and again.

I find myself - 24 year old Kelsey - caught in the middle of a contradiction. I want adventure, spontaneity, and to be completely uprooted, while I simultaneously desire security, groundedness, and continuity.

I want to move to a new state every year (which I've done for the last three consecutive years) and make new friends and have new, crazy adventures and I also want to own a home with a picket fence and a dog and never move again.

I want to address poverty and devote my life to 15 causes and protest bad stuff and get arrested for said protesting and I also want to curl up with my girlfriend every night and watch Modern Family or Scandal and go to bed at 10 p.m. - oh, and having a record probably wouldn't look good for finding a normal job.

I still have no idea what kind of grown up I want to be.

Eighteen year old Kelsey probably did not dream of this life but what did 18 year old Kelsey know? She didn't even know that the place I currently live (Michigan's upper peninsula) exists.

She hadn't learned yet how beautiful the world is, or that she'd find herself falling in love with mountains, oceans, and most recently, very large lakes. She had yet to discover her adventurous self, the one who - just two years later - would fly to the other side of the world and, among other highly adventurous activities, hitchhike across a mountain range.

Eighteen year old Kelsey, in all of her optimism, naivety, and youth, allowed herself be wired by the community around her into a lover of humanity (for which I will be forever thankful). Her number one fear was to settle for an unfulfilled life. Her greatest ambition was to hear the secrets of everyone she met. (That part hasn't changed at all, and I know more than she would have ever hoped.)

She was ignorant in her beliefs that change was easy, that other people would want to change too, and that people would always be around to ponder the big life questions with her. But she dared to see the potential of a better world.

She was ambitious in thought, but not always very practical. For instance, 18 year old Kelsey also once promised to never make a decision based on money, and let's be honest: that's just downright stupid.

I think she thought by now I'd have finally figured out a career (which I haven't), that I'd be finishing up grad school (which I haven't started yet), and ideally that I would have ended poverty by now, and if not today hopefully sometime next week. 

Sometimes I feel like I'm letting her down. Sometimes I feel like that wild ambition has gone to waste, that all those big ideas are sitting dormant now.

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I believe she would be critical of how much of a planner I've become, that she'd think I allow too little room for life's surprises. I think she would be excited about my amazing community, but wonder why I am spending so much time sitting down, letting life happen to me instead of throwing myself head first into the chaos.

And so maybe it's okay that 24 year old Kelsey is stuck with a naive, highly idealistic, and crazily optimistic 18 year old Kelsey's voice in my head, pushing me forward just when I'm ready to sit still for awhile.

When I think about the difference between myself today and myself six years ago, the thing 18 year old Kelsey did was dream bigger. She didn't do life much differently than I do, she was just totally determined that a better world was not just possible, that she could help bring it to fruition. I think 18 year old Kelsey would like to reach through the past into today and shake out the skepticism and cynicism that has slowly crept into my being.

And I believe that every now and then it's helpful for me to look at my life through her critical eye, wondering what she would say about the life I've chosen for myself.  And I have hope that one of these days I'll make her proud.



What would your 18 year old self say about the way you're living today? Is that voice helpful to you today?

I can't wait to hear your stories,
Kelsey

Running: A Love/Story

This piece is going to take two, count them two, disclaimers.

Disclaimer 1: This story was written prior to, but edited after, the Boston Marathon explosions. The timing was a coincidence, but I decided to publish the story anyway, hoping that it doesn't communicate any sort of insensitivity, but rather the incredible sense of community people can develop by doing the same thing at the same time. My thoughts and prayers are with those affected by yesterday's events.

Disclaimer 2: Unlike most pieces written on Her/Story, this one lacks a thesis statement, a conclusion, and maybe even an argument. I've taken the name of our blog seriously and told a story, modeled off of a couple of storytelling venues that I adore: The Moth and Modern Love. Check them out!

I was 19 and a month into training for my first marathon when my grandfather, one of the best men I have ever known, died suddenly. I spent the next several months running in the midst of my confusion, trying to process my devastation, attempting to grasp what to me felt like true injustice. When my training ended, I completed the marathon, patted myself on the back, mentally checked "Marathon" off my bucket list, and stopped running.

Marathon Finish, Des Moines, IA 2008

Four years later, I would move back to Iowa to take care of my grandmother who had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

There's this saying in life that you should live like you could die tomorrow. It took Grandma and I an entire month to get over the grief and realize that Grandma needed to stop thinking she was going to slip off any moment. She needed to die like she was going to live tomorrow. And me? I needed to get out of the house more.

So Grandma and I started talking walks and I started training for another marathon.

It's been eight months and Grandma has officially outlived the time she was given by her doctor. And me? I'm still living in her house and I'm still running. I stay with her Sunday night through Friday afternoon, and other family members take care of her on the weekends. This means I get to spend my weekends visiting friends all over the Midwest.

Last weekend, I went to Kansas City to watch several friends run a half marathon. I was standing at mile 9, cheering like crazy for these random people that I didn't know, waiting for my friends to run by when I was absolutely struck by how amazing this whole thing was. Here was person after person running by me who had dedicated part of their life to doing exactly what I was dedicating part of my life to doing: running. Running a long freaking way.

Half Marathon Starting Line, Kansas City, MO 2013

There was a woman on the other side of the street cheering for the runners with her two kids, and I knew immediately she was a runner. There's this thing about runners that's just like with lesbians, they don't have to be running down the street or holding their girlfriends' hands (respectively), if you're one of them you tend to know who the other ones are.

So this lady and I are cheering loudly, and at some point the slower set of runners run by us and I'm watching them, yelling my guts out, and these people start looking at me, right in the eye, and saying "thank you." Thanking me. In the middle of their 13 mile runs. And I flash back to my 16 mile run the day before when I could have really used someone at mile 9 yelling for me, and I start yelling my guts out for these strangers, yelling because I get it, because I've literally been in their shoes, literally felt their blisters, literally wanted to quit just like they're looking like they want to quit right this very moment. And that's when the tears start flowing down my face, quite unexpectedly, and I'm surprised because, although I'm both a runner and a crier, they don't normally fit into the same section of my life.

But here's the truth about people like me who take at least 10 minutes to run a mile: we don't run long distance to beat the person running next to us. We don't run long distance for exercise either, because if we wanted to get that we'd just run 5ks. No, no, for people like us there's something much deeper at stake. There's something about identity, something about seeking ourselves going on. Maybe we're running from something, maybe we're running to something, or maybe we have something to prove. But the truth is you can't spend hour after hour hitting the pavement without having to confront yourself even if only just about, at bare minimum, how freaking tired your legs are. Maybe for these reasons, I have dated people who are runners almost exclusively over the years.

My very own cheering squad, Des Moines, IA 2008

I spend an hour cheering at mile 9 and then I move on. I head to the finish and I stand right next to the mile 13 marker, a tenth of a mile from the finish line. And I notice immediately that no one next to me is cheering. They're standing, watching quietly. And I make a quick decision to give the runners every bit of energy I can muster. Suddenly I'm screaming; I'm clapping so hard I have to take breaks because my arms get so tired. I'm saying things like "You're almost there." "The end is in sight!" "Power through!" But what I really want to be saying to these people is "Look! Do you see it? You accomplished your goal! You did the thing you wanted to do, the thing you spent hours training for, and even though you feel like total shit right now, you have conquered this run."

But the words won't come out of my mouth. They get stuck in my throat because by now I'm crying, full on crying, because I feel so proud of these perfect strangers. So I keep yelling the one-liners, praying they understand that I am mentally with them, one hundred and ten percent. And these people are looking up from the pavement at me, and I swear they are seeing my whole self. I swear they're seeing things in me I didn't even know existed. And a couple of them, even at the very end of this whole freaking race, tell me thank you as they run, sometimes stumbling, by.

My last friend finishes the race and still I can't pull myself away. These people have come too far, I keep telling myself, not to get cheered for in their last tenth of a mile. So I stand there, clapping, yelling, and crying, until I am totally exhausted (which is funny because I'm not even running). And finally I slowly walk away to meet my friends, the only three people at this race that I actually know. Leaving the race seems so strange though, because in this moment I'm feeling like I'm walking away from a crowd full of friends I've known my whole entire life.

Love Always,
Kelsey