Open Letter to Myself of 5 Years Ago

7-1-16

Dear Rose,

                I won’t lie, the next few weeks will suck. You don’t know this yet, but you won’t sleep for the next two days and you will feel terrible. This is your gut telling you to get out of the situation. You won’t do it at first, but after stewing for a few weeks and talking to your “twin” Jen, you will break free. It will take time to recover. While you will get heartbroken in the future, I hope and pray this is the only time you will ever get your mind broken. You will get through it! Don’t beat yourself up when it takes time to heal! You’ve given six months of your life to someone who has sucked you into his warped way of thinking. It will be years before you go to Mass without either feeling guilty because your shirt is “too low cut” or doing it on purpose out of defiance. But these years will pass.

                This isn’t the only challenge you will go through in the coming years. You will meet more Mr. Collinses. Someone you hoped would be a Darcy will turn out to be a Wickam of the vilest sort. And it’s not only in romantic relationships that you will struggle.

                In less than two months, you will be forced to make an excruciating decision. You will know what you have to do, and will do it, but it will rip your heart out. The months after that will be miserable. You will feel close to ok, only to have a friend betray you, or a carpet ripped out from under your feet. You will spend countless hours trapped in your parents’ house wanting to die. It won’t be all bad, however! You will be come much closer to Helen and John. Helen will become one of your best friends. She was a little kid when you left for college and now you’ll get to know her as a young adult. Eventually, you will get a job. Not a good one – but you will enjoy it. And, in the end, this experience will lead you to a career that you love.

                Let me tell you a little more about the next few years. After ten months in the US, you will move back to Hungary. While teaching on the eastern side of the country, you will fall in love – with teaching. The next summer, you will, willingly, move back to the US for grad school. Two years later, you will end up in CHINA. The next summer, you will take the Trans-Mongolian Railway from Beijing to Russia. After that, I can’t tell you; I haven’t lived it yet!

                These years won’t be easy either. You will make and lose friends. You will be betrayed and maligned by someone you trusted. But you will make it!

                Five years to the day after that airport meeting, you will walk down the street in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, almost crying as you mentally compose this letter. None of this would have happened if you had tried to make that relationship work. In the end, you probably would have gotten your heart broken along with your mind. (For future reference, if the idea of kissing someone makes you feel ill, you probably should date them!)

                Today, you are adventurous, happy, living a full life, and FREE. There might be a relationship in your future, but, for now, you are too busy living your life to mind being single.

                I’m going to close now before the tears escape the corners of my eyes and the Mongolian family in my cabin on the train think I’m nuts. I am so proud of all you/I have accomplished and I can’t wait to see what’s next!

                I’m rooting for you!

                                                Rose

See new blog title :-)

As you can see, I've got big plans for next year!

As of today, I have officially submitted my application for the Central European Teaching Program and, baring any unexpected disaster, will be teaching ESL in Hungary starting in the Fall. I am thrilled to be going home and so thankful that CETP is providing the way for me to get there. My placement isn't definite but I am most likely going to be working at a bilingual elementary school in a small city (~25,000) called Hajdúszoboszló in Eastern Hungary near Debrecen (the second largest city in Hungary). After such a rough few months, it is hard to express just how happy I am to have a direction and something to work towards again. As I get more information, I will continue to share it but for right now, my plan is to arrive in Hungary between August 13 and 20, bum around in BP for a week or so before CETP orientation starts on August 23rd, then head east to begin teaching.

Reality sucks

During my year in Budapest, every few days I would have "pinch me" moments. Those moments where it hit me again: I actually am in Budapest. I'm living in my favorite city in the world. Being in Europe is my "normal." I'm not 4000+ miles away from my favorite ice cream and pastry shops. I have a full-time job with benefits and can afford life.

After being back in the States for a few months, I'm having those "pinch me" moments again. Only this time I want the pinch to wake me from a bad dream even though I know this is reality. Make all of the statements above negative and that's pretty much what these moments strike me with.

And, it's even bigger than that. I swore when I started college that I was never moving back to Steubenville. Now, my options are live here with my parents or be homeless. That's not much of a choice. On top of being back in the States, being stuck in Steubenville is like adding insult to injury. Unless you go to the university, there is very little of interest or value in this town. I don't know when I've ever felt so trapped. There are simply no opportunities here. I finally have a job (part time in a walmart bakery) but still don't have a car and pretty much anything meaningful requires a trip to Pittsburgh which requires use of a car, gas money, and large amounts of time.

If I was still in a city, I think things would be better but, as it is, I'm not. I keep getting information about auditions for all kinds of choirs and shows in Pittsburgh but, if I'm honest with myself, I'm just too far away for that to really be feasible. Which means I'm stuck with VERY minimal musical opportunities and little chance to improve them. Church choir, while good, only goes so far. The one community group which I've joined is disbanding after the next concert and, even if it wasn't, I wouldn't stay with them because the director's rehearsal and conducting skills, or COMPLETE lack thereof, make me want to walk out every week. I *am* splurging and driving into Pittsburgh every other week or so for voice lessons with a new teacher. Unfortunately, while they are going as well as they can, we have to go painfully slowly as we work to correct years of bad (or not ideal or something) technique that I had drilled into me. I wish God would give me a new dream based on the way this one is falling apart but that doesn't seem to be happening.

To make an already bad situation even worse, my depression is at the worst that it's been in years if not ever. I have no interest in doing much of anything and find plodding through the day about the most I can handle. It's as if, rather than seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm realizing that I've driven into a cave. My doctor isn't helping as it takes four months to get an appointment (I wish I was exaggerating). Since it's easier to see the nurse practitioner, I'm going tomorrow but since she hasn't been treating me since the beginning I'm worried that it will be harder to move forward compared to my doc who knows all the different meds I've already tried. I'm furious with my ex for nagging me into stopping my meds and myself for caving to his radical views. There is so much rage bottled up inside toward him that some days I almost want to write a nasty email telling him just how badly he screwed me up mentally and emotionally. I know he didn't "mean" to but it doesn't change the facts.

As for God, I know He's out there. And I guess I believe He cares. Maybe. I'm just spiritually dead. Oh, sure, I'm going through the motions: reading my Bible, working through a spiritual book, going to daily Mass most of the time, praying before meals, etc. but mostly because I have time and I feel like I "should" go. I love the new translations of the Mass except for one in the prayer after the Our Father --

"Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ" the priest prays.

I can't help but give a silent, morbid chuckle every time I hear it. If the prayer is asking (as it appears) to be kept safe from distress then either God's not listening or He and I have very different opinions of what constitutes distress. I'm not saying that things couldn't be worse (which, with my luck, they probably will become) or trying to imply that no one has ever dealt with more crap than all this, but I'm not exactly walking through a field of daisies.