Making Peace with the Past that Made You

Pt. I – Forgiveness

In a world inhabited by imperfect people, mistakes and missteps run rampant. Between letting yourself down and hurting those you care about, it can seem like forgiveness is something demanded of you every time you turn around. For something so challenging to give, it can be hard to fathom that we have an infinite supply. Each time we forgive someone, it doesn’t deplete our ability to forgive the next person. This is miraculous, considering there are few things you will have to exercise as frequently as grace and forgiveness.

I say “have to” as though you have no choice. What I mean is in order to have a life lived to its’ fullest, unencumbered by heavy burdens of your past, forgiveness is essential. However, if freedom from your own guilt and anger towards others isn’t something you seek, it may not be essential to you. Personally, I have lived without making forgiveness something I give daily effort to. I lived with grudges against other people and it made me jealous, spiteful, and entitled to an apology I felt like I deserved. It made me resent the happiness of people I hadn’t forgiven. It made me fixate on a situation much longer than I should. I lived with guilt from my own actions, and it made me ashamed, bitter, and unable to see myself as a truly good person. It made me isolate myself from people who gave me love I felt undeserving of. It made me define myself by my past actions and decisions and not by who I truly am. It was a terrible way to live, trapped in the confines of past grudges and guilt. Forgiveness set me free from all of the negative chains I was tangled in, caused both by myself and people around me. Forgiveness of others allowed me to move on and accept an apology I would never get. Forgiveness of myself allowed me to accept my mistakes and strive for constant growth, rather than perfection.

Forgiveness can be such a difficult road to navigate. I say road, because it really is an ongoing journey rather than a one-time destination. The choice to forgive is often one that has to be made more than once, even for the same offense. Whether it be towards yourself or someone else, sometimes it’s even a daily choice to continue exercising grace when your mind and heart may be saying something completely different. There is not one defining moment where you choose to forgive someone, and suddenly all negative emotions dissipate and the long-standing wounds heal. Just like choosing to love someone in a marriage, forgiveness is a choice that you commit to every day. It’s reminding yourself to set down the anger and leave the pain in the past, even if you have to remind yourself every hour, every time your stomach churns with bitterness.

There is so much negativity surrounding forgiveness, as if it makes you weak for moving on or undermines the gravity of a situation.

Forgiveness is not excusing. Forgiveness is not trivializing the offense. Forgiveness is not apologizing for being angry. Forgiveness is not giving up the right to your pain. Forgiveness is not condoning the same behavior in the future. Forgiveness is not an invitation back into your life. Forgiveness does not grant a second chance. Forgiveness is not an invitation to be taken advantage of. Forgiveness is not the antonym of standing up for yourself.

Forgiveness is simply saying: “I acknowledge your humanness. I know that, like myself, you have made mistakes. I choose to give you the same benefit I would want when I inevitably make mistakes in the future. While I may disagree with your actions and maybe your motives, I choose to give you the same grace I want to be given. I will not see you as the sum of the pain you caused me, but for who you are.”

Of course, no one actually talks like that (except me, on my soapbox) but that's the sentiment behind forgiveness.

It's been said that holding a grudge is like holding onto a hot pan and refusing to put it down, even though the pain gets worse and worse. Holding onto it doesn’t burn anyone else, and setting it down won’t heal anyone else. The grudge you hold onto and clutch so closely is not hurting anyone but yourself. It is making you bitter, angry, and potentially breaking your heart every day that you refuse to put it down. When you’re holding onto something that’s burning you, no one else feels the pain like you do. Holding on doesn’t punish anyone, make them accountable for their actions, make them feel remorse, or change the past. Holding on only hurts you. Forgiving someone and releasing that grudge doesn’t change the situation that caused it, but it will change your situation. It allows you to put down the hot pan and begin the healing process.

There are so many different kinds of forgiveness. Forgiving someone who knows they were wrong and wants to change, versus someone who doesn’t think they are and doesn’t want to change. Forgiving someone who knows they were wrong, but not allowing them back into your life. Forgiving yourself and choosing to learn from your mistakes, but not allow them to define you. A million different situations could yield a million different opportunities to forgive, but the result is always going to be the same: forgiveness sets you free. Not them, you.

Pt II – The Past

“The past can hurt, but the way I see it, you can either run from it or you can learn from it.”

- The Lion King

One of the most beautifully frustrating things about the past is that it is cemented in reality forever. No amount of longing, wistfulness, or nostalgia can bring back a happy time. No amount of grief, guilt, or remorse can alter a bad time. It is, as they say so eloquently, what it is.

You are the sum of every second of your past. Every hug, scraped knee, sleepless night, laughing fit, heartbreak, and success molded you into the glorious patchwork of a human that lives in this moment, reading these words. You can change your past as easily as you can sprout wings and fly off into the stratosphere. While it would be incredible to be able to do either of those things, neither is likely to happen anytime soon. So, as Rafiki said, you can either run from your past or learn from it. I learned very quickly when I was eleven that rollerblades and long, steep drainage ditches don’t mix. That lesson didn’t unscrape my legs or heal the ugly scars, but it sure kept me from doing it again. I learned the best lessons from things that hurt me the worst. I learned from having my heart broken. I learned from being rejected by people and by opportunities. I learned from hurting my friends. While I would love to have a squeaky clean track record with no mistakes, betrayals, heartbreaks, or scarred knees, that is never going to happen. Even if it was possible to wipe away all of these painful memories, I would be wiping away the person I am today. She wouldn’t exist without feeling all of that pain. (and she sure wouldn’t have her charmingly sardonic sense of humor.)

Making peace with your past isn’t just forgiving yourself and those around you. It’s forgiving the world for being imperfect and difficult. It’s forgiving life for all of its’ disparities and unfairness. It’s accepting that anger about what happened to you won’t unhurt you, it will only rob you of all the joy possible for you in the future. Your story will continue to be your story regardless of whether or not you choose to make peace with it, so why not write the next chapter in gratitude rather than bitterness?

Pt III – Making Peace with Someone Else’s Past

Once again, I will say that in an imperfect world, you are bound to encounter imperfect humans (or strictly imperfect humans, as there is no other kind). Building friendships and relationships involves a degree of vulnerability and sharing your past so people can better understand your present. Especially in romantic relationships, there is a chance that someone else’s past brings you present pain. Whether it be a friend’s past decisions that caused harm to someone close to you, or a boyfriend’s past with girls who aren’t you, pain stemming from someone else’s history is just as real as pain from your own.

It’s such a difficult topic to wrestle with, because am I really entitled to being hurt by something that this person did before they were ever in my life? Before I was ever a thought in their head, how can I expect them to have made decisions that would only benefit me? Deep down, we know it’s irrational to be angry or upset at someone for decisions they made in the past with no intention to hurt us. They don’t have to be accountable to us for things they did during a time they owed us nothing. You have no reason to be hurt, jealous, betrayed, or anything else over events in in someone’s world that you didn’t exist in yet. It is neither healthy nor helpful to hold someone’s past against them when you didn’t have a place in that part of their life, especially not if it is already something sensitive to them that they may regret. Continually bringing it up will only serve to use their past as a divide between the two of you going forward.

However, logic doesn’t always trump emotion. You can’t reason with hurt feelings. Believe me, I have tried and failed to talk sense into my own broken heart and hurt pride more times than I’d like to admit. All of those pep-talks in the mirror didn’t do the trick. Just knowing that your hurt feelings are probably irrational doesn’t just make them go away. If you find yourself unable to move beyond a dark stain in someone’s past (whether the dark stain be poor treatment of others, beliefs that go against your own, a string of beautiful exes, or another kind of broken relationship) remember this:

I am looking at a person who I hold very close to my heart. Someone I care so deeply about that things that hurt them hurt me too. Having this person in my life has made it infinitely better. Exactly who they are is exactly who I need. If I love this person so much, how can I resent what made them who they are? I can appreciate the role a bad thing served, while still acknowledging that it’s bad. Every event in their life shaped them into the beautiful human that is sitting in front of me. If any one thing had been different, I may have never even known them. Taking this perspective doesn’t take away your emotions, but it adds a perspective of thankfulness that goes right back to the cliché that everything happens for a reason.

I have plenty of skeletons in my own closet, but am so thankful for the people in my life who look past them and love the person I have become because of it all. I give people the same benefit regarding their story that I would want for mine, and will want in the future with all the mistakes I have yet to make.

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Austin:

Forgiveness is a tricky subject to talk about when it comes to relationships in particular because there are so many emotions involved.

An example of forgiveness that I would like you to think about is a teacher giving you a test. You fail the test badly, but you know that you made a mistake when you studied and know you can do better. The teacher lets you know there is nothing you can do about that test, but there is another one coming up in a couple weeks. You can prove that it was just a fluke the first time. You end up getting a “B” on the second test, and both you and the teacher feel better about it.

This is a situation, much like looking at someone’s past, that would be done best without emotion. You failing the first test didn’t mean that you were going to fail the second one, or that you were stupid; it just meant that you had made a mistake previously. This same thing can be applied when trying to find someone to date.

(Quick note: Cheating on the test is not acceptable so if your other half cheats on YOU, then they probably aren’t the one. If they cheated on somebody else in the past, but you really like them, then give them a chance to prove themselves to you. It could end up being a one-time mistake, or it could be a pattern of behavior they will carry forever. Keep your eyes open in this situation, but don’t be afraid to open up after vetting the person first.)

If you constantly look at someone’s past and judge them, you will never find someone to spend your life with. At the end of the day, all of us have a past that we would do differently if given the chance to, much like the test taking example. If the teacher would have just looked at the first score on the test and decided you're a failure because you failed the first time how would you feel? I’m guessing you would feel it was unfair that you didn't get a second chance. Maybe you had a tragic moment in your life right before you took it, or you had a friend need you the night before the test that kept you up too late and caused you to fail. We would expect forgiveness in that situation because there is no emotional connection to a test. For some reason, when it comes to figuring out if we want a relationship with a person, we judge them on their past failures harshly. What if they were using dating as a way to cope with another area of their life that they needed to escape at that time? If it was their version of an escape, it's fair to say that we'd generally feel sympathy for them, rather than judgement. Even though we don’t accept their behavior as correct, we still can usually see the connection. We need to be able to separate what was a past “mistake,” and what would be continuing behavior.

After giving a person a chance, it is easier to tell if the two of you will be compatible. Of course, this number will always be smaller than the group of people that you actually choose to date for a longer period of time, but there is nothing wrong with exploring options. There is also nothing wrong with knowing you found the right person. They both have pros and cons to them that come with their own challenges. If you have only ever dated the one person you're with, doubt might creep in about whether they really are the right person for you, or could you have done better, maybe even missed out on a lot of fun so you could make it work. On the other hand if you dated different people, you may have to deal with your current boyfriend/girlfriend wondering why you dated all of those people, wondering if they are more attractive than people in your past, and most likely worrying that they are just another one in the line of girls/guys that you have dated.

All of these things are, in some way, fair. If you only dated one person in your life, you probably did miss out on some things. If you dated a lot of people, it is fair for your current boyfriend or girlfriend to wonder what makes them different from the others. This is where it is important to be able to communicate, verbally and non-verbally, to them. If you are happy with the person you have been with since high school, then why does it matter if you missed out on some things? If you would have gotten to experience those things, your life would probably be very different than it is at this moment. If your person has dated a lot of people, maybe they wouldn’t appreciate you as much without seeing how all the others they were with acted or treated them first. All of these things are very subtle because we don’t often ask ourselves those questions. We are too busy trying to blame our own insecurities on our other half that we lose sight of all the blessings in disguise that made the relationship possible in the first place.

This brings me to my last topic that everything happens for a reason.

What brought the two of you together? What made you best friends? How lucky was it we were both in that bar that night and we both had just become single? All of these questions have been asked before by people who can’t grasp the reality that everything happens for a reason.

For example, Hannah and I have a pretty funny story of how we got together. I had been single for a long time, trying to find someone that I thought could potentially be my life partner. I had become a float teller at a bank in August, because I had to wait for the training program for the job I actually wanted at the bank to start in January. At this point, I had an accounting degree, so I was a very qualified teller to say the least. I didn't plan to be a teller first. I actually missed the June start date of that training program I originally planned on starting because I had surgery to repair my labrum in my shoulder (full story in the last post).

Anyways, in October, I ended up floating to a branch where one of her best friends worked. She happened to pull up a picture of Hannah on her Instagram. I asked who it was, and if she could maybe set me up with her. Well, the next day came, and… turns out she didn’t say anything about me to Hannah (classic). So I dated a couple more girls over the next three months, but nothing seemed to be right for me.

Finally, I decided I would just DM her on Instagram in early January (super romantic, I know). Now all of you that read Hannah's post about what she does in January know where this is going. I got no response until February 1st, four weeks later, because she was taking the month off social media. When she finally responded, I got her number, and we planned to hang out one night.

Well, that day I was finishing up training in Kansas City, which had been hit pretty hard with snow over the past few days. The roads weren’t terrible, but it still took longer than usual to get home. I almost decided to bail, and try to reschedule but I ended up going even though I was exhausted. Come to find out later that if I had bailed, she would have rolled her eyes and ghosted me most likely, and nothing ever would have happened between us.

Now, I haven’t counted, but there are probably at least ten events that happened and directly led me to dating her, without which I wouldn’t even know who Hannah was. If I hadn't torn my labrum, I wouldn't have missed my training session. If I hadn't missed my training session, I wouldn't have become a float teller. If I hadn't become a float teller, I wouldn't have met Hannah's best friend. If I had never met her friend, I never would have known to pursue her.

All of that story is just to show you that things have an order to them. It isn’t just random chaos in your life, it is all choreographed to shape your life into the way it is supposed to be. Don’t let the negative events crush your spirit, but let them build a steadfast armor on it. You have the power to grow in times of pain and agony, and to understand it is all for an end goal. It's like working out and dieting, it sucks when you're doing it, but at the end it feels good to look in the mirror, and be proud of what you accomplished through all the suffering it took to get there. The last thing I will say is control your emotions when it's more difficult, and you will be rewarded with the sweetest prize.

Hindsight, Hard Lessons, and Hope

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard

When I read a book, I split my time between actually digesting the material and trying desperately to figure out the ending. Oftentimes, the ending features a last minute plot twist or something that could have never been seen from the readers’ vantage point, throwing off all of my theories. This leaves who knows how many fruitless attempts to figure out a tangled storyline, wasted.

(This is the part where I cleverly bridge this metaphor into a comparison with life.)

From your present vantage point, you are as powerless as the reader in the middle of a novel when it comes to predicting the ending. From your position at age 15, 18, 22 or 40, you have no idea what plot twists are to come in the future or what cliffhangers turn into the best storylines. Once you turn the final page of the book and close the back cover, the loose ends have been tied up and all of the burning questions you mulled over and over again have been answered. (Well, at the end of a good book they have been). You can reflect and realize that every plot twist and raised question served to reach the purpose revealed in the ending.

In my wise old age of 21 years, I found the same thing to be true about life. Every season I have struggled through and trial I wished away served to either bring a blessing into my life or teach me a lesson.

Just recently, I rekindled with a longtime best friend. A disagreement and life changes drove us apart for the better part of a year and the separation was full of bitterness and resentment. Thankfully, absence makes the heart grow fonder and gives much needed perspective. The mourning of an old friendship gave way to the birth of a new, stronger one. She and I were able to work through the issues that came between us with maturity and empathy that would not have developed without the pain of the moment. Today, our friendship is one of immense support, deep understanding, and complete acceptance. Not only do we reap the benefits of a strengthened bond, but she was able to channel the painful emotions she experienced into lyrics, and even produced her own EP with songs that helped her heal. While neither of us would like to live that season of life again, we are each immensely thankful for the growth we experienced as individuals and as friends, which is something I wouldn’t have dreamt of saying a year ago, when things seemed bleak and hopeless for us. I came out the other side more forgiving, more humble, and much more apt to apologize when I am wrong.

When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, I felt like screaming at the universe. I questioned everything and understood nothing, and it truly felt like the most daunting season of my life thus far. Fast forward through several of the most challenging years of my family’s life, and we now consider that season to be one of our biggest gifts. That dark cloud looming over us for months on end made us appreciate the good days more than we ever could before. I was humbled by our frail humanity and the fact that even my mom, my superwoman, was not invincible. From the days of chemo and hair loss and endless nights crying, we have found a testimony that connects us to more people than we ever would have dreamt. Every member of my family has been able to use our nightmare to witness to other people, some of which are living through their own. An organization who helped us in so many ways is now one that I am on my third year of working with as a volunteer and committee member and has connected me to so many wonderful human beings that I never would have met otherwise. I came out of this season more empathetic, quicker to hug, and incredibly aware of how precious and finite life is. I could talk for paragraphs on end about all of the good that has come from all of that bad, but that isn’t the reason I’m writing today.

During both of these oh so challenging seasons, I was so deep in overwhelmingly negative emotion that I never would have imagined good could come from them. Those are only two examples of times in my life that I was so consumed with what was happening around me, I couldn’t see what was happening within me. When you’re standing in the middle of the woods, you can only see the trees right in front of you, it’s impossible to see the entire forest. Regardless of how many times I can repeat this learned lesson to myself, I still get caught up in the now and forget that each trial is a teacher.

For the rest of this post, I want to do something a little different and let someone else do the speaking for a change. Someone very near and dear to my heart also happens to have one of the more adventurous and interesting lives I've encountered thus far. I hereby defer to my partner in crime.

My name is Austin Ruder, Hannah’s very good-looking (and humble) boyfriend, and I have been asked to give a little more insight on this topic based on some events that have taken place in my life. I, like all of us, have faced challenge after challenge, but throughout the years I have learned to face them all head on.

Before I tell my first story, here's a little background on me. I grew up playing sports my entire life, and eventually went on to play Division 1 basketball at Missouri State University. I spent thousands of hours practicing and perfecting my craft to reach my lifelong goal of playing Division 1 basketball. I finally realized that dream in 2012 when I signed to play at Missouri State. I knew college basketball would be a lot different, but the four years of playing at Missouri State gave me a different perspective on almost everything, both good and bad.

My senior season of basketball at Nixa I got sick. At first, it was just a really bad sore throat that I though would cost me a day or two at school. That minor sore throat ended up turning into one of the longest week and a half of my life. I couldn’t eat or drink anything, and I mean ANYTHING, for a week. I had to make two trips to the emergency room, and another trip to the doctor during that week. One trip to the hospital had me spitting into a water bottle because it hurt so bad to swallow. I ended up losing 12 pounds that week, and had to get four bags of IV fluids because I was so dehydrated. This was unlike anything I had experienced before because there was nothing I could do, and none of the doctors seemed to know what I was dealing with. They finally figured it out, but unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot they could do about it.

I remember sitting there with the IV needle in my arm, looking at slushy flavors from Sonic on my phone because I was so thirsty. It was especially disheartening because I was about to start my first year playing at Missouri State, and starting with this setback was going to be tough to overcome. All these things kept playing in my head, along with the usual frustration of never getting better when you’re sick.

Eventually I did recover, but gaining all of the weight and muscle I had lost took a bit of time. The day I arrived back at school, I had friends and teachers telling me I looked super skinny (which I was). It was a long road back.

The first year I played in college, there were relatively no problems extraordinary from the environment I was in. We had some really fun moments as a team, and I got acclimated to college life. Then came my sophomore summer where the real struggles were about to begin. It started by being told I was not going to start that year before we had even finished one workout. The player who was going to start over me had played sparingly the prior year, and I was among tops in the conference in minutes played (and started). This came as a complete shock to me because the team had a good last year, and had most of the team was returning for the current. Then I suffered what was called a strained groin in a fall practice that would later be revealed to be a torn hip labrum, which requires surgery. It plagued me the entire season. That year was a disaster from start to finish. We had one of the worst seasons in Missouri State program history, I played less, and the head coach and I did not see eye to eye on almost anything. I started to question if I would quit basketball, started eating however I wanted instead of staying in shape, and let my attitude reflect my internal dilemmas.

My junior year came with two surgeries; one sports hernia + adductor release, and a hip labrum repair surgery. These forced me to medical redshirt the year, on top of going through endless amounts of rehab just to be able to get back on the court. It was a discouraging time to say the least. I had just come off a year where I didn’t play a lot (or very well, when I did) and now faced a full year of just rehabbing my injuries. Was this God trying to tell me that it was time to hang it up? Could I mentally handle playing for a coach I didn’t agree with, and that I felt didn’t have any respect for me? All of this on top of having to deal with typical girlfriend problems, (not Hannah) upper level accounting classes, and a declining attitude that was changing my outlook. Then came the real sign from God.

I heard that my old coach and mentor, Rodney Perry, was getting a job at Oral Roberts University. Because of the medical redshirt I had taken, I would be able to transfer to Oral Roberts to play for him once again, at the collegiate level this time. Of course, that meant I would have to stay at Missouri State for one more year to finish my degree, but that was okay because I now had a light at the end of the tunnel. I did what I could my last year at Missouri State, battling a coach that didn’t want me there, a fan base that thought I was washed up, and a body that had been beaten down from years of playing. I started that year playing a decent amount until conference came along. Then, I hardly played at all for a stretch, then started a couple games, and ended the year back on the bench. My morale was shattered once again because even though I knew where I wanted to go, I still wanted to win anything and everything I put my time into. I have too much pride to put work into something and be happy when it fails. With that said, I can’t say I wasn’t relieved for the season to be over in the end, although I was sad for my teammates who didn’t have the chance to play one more season in college like I did.

I told the coaching staff I would not be returning for my 5th year. After that, a couple significant things happened to me. The first was the online sports' community message boards started saying things like I could 'maybe play at Drury,' and I 'just wasn’t good enough to play Division 1 anymore', and so on. Disclaimer, there is nothing wrong with playing at Drury, or anywhere for that matter, but the intent from the people writing this was to insult me as a person and a player. Around the same time, one of the team staff said he was getting a lot of calls from Division 2 schools saying that they would love me to attend. Which again, was implying I wasn’t capable of playing at the Division 1 level and even my own team staff agreed. Lastly, the athletic department didn’t give me my athletics' sash for graduation after announcing my transfer. I had to call in to say I didn’t receive one, after which I was given the white sash without the words “Athletics” on it that all other student athletes receive. That’s when I knew, without a doubt, I had made the right choice to leave. As soon as I made the decision, I felt hopeful, relieved, and reinvigorated before the next chapter of my life.

A couple months later, I was off to Tulsa to play for Oral Roberts. When workouts started, it was brutal because I hadn't been working out like I should have been. I called my mom to tell her I had made a huge mistake deciding to play basketball another year. My apartment wasn’t ready, so I had to stay at a hotel for a month, and it was my first experience really being away from home. With my previous negative experiences with college basketball, all of these things didn’t phase me as much as they once would have. I adjusted quickly to the new surroundings, and actually started hanging out with teammates, which I never did at Missouri State. I got involved, started going to different events like soccer games and volleyball games. I also met two of my best friends there that year that were involved with the team.

The season was filled with struggles, though, as we played a very tough schedule on top of dislocating my shoulder about a month into playing games. Despite all of that, I had my best season since my freshman year, for a lot of reasons. I genuinely enjoyed playing there. We finished the season about the same as the last four I had played, but this one was different. I knew would never get to be around this group of guys again. I had never had that feeling before in my years at Missouri State. I mean, sure, I had guys I liked on the team, but it wasn’t like this. These guys were my brothers, guys I would do anything in my power to help in any aspect of life they needed me in. The coaching staff treated me with respect, and gave me a place to play when they didn’t have to. I will always be grateful for that and the opportunity they gave me.

All of that was to lead up to what I learned from the experience. I know my story was a little bit more drawn out than Hannah’s, but mine was over a span of five years so hopefully y’all give me a pass. My mentor Coach Perry had helped me throughout my basketball career, but also with building life skills. Sports are a means to an end with almost everyone on this planet, so use it to meet great people and get a great education that means something. Sports are not life, but they can be a tool for conception of opportunities. Some of our biggest challenges in life will often fade into obscurity as time passes by. I will always remember that time in my life I was so sick, but now I'm not afraid of illness that are potentially life threatening or painful. Those events will come and go to everyone in this life at some point, so why constantly panic about what we can’t control? Just remember, it's always darkest before the dawn and your struggles can turn into blessings, changing the way you see the situation entirely.

Thank y’all for letting me share a couple stories with you, and hopefully I will be invited back soon. - Austin Ruder

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”-John 16:33 NKJV

Off The Grid: My Annual Month off of Social Media

January, the eternal month, has finally come to an end. The coldest, bleakest, dreariest month to ever exist. Personally, I feel like I have lived four different lifetimes between New Years’ and today. The past thirty one days were a time vortex of being cold, antisocial, and just generally wondering if I would ever see the sunshine again. A little dramatic, but we all suffered through the same month.

The reason I say it was a month of being antisocial is twofold. Primarily, because the Christmas/holiday season is a whirlwind of parties, family obligations, and general constant activity. For me at least, from October through NYE, it has been birthday celebration after Halloween party after birthday celebration after holiday after weekend trip after yet another birthday celebration. Therefore when it all comes to an end, I am generally left feeling exhausted and in need of social hibernation to restore all of my anecdotal humor and pleasantries. Secondly, this is the third year in a row I have used January as a social media detox month. Beginning first thing January 1st, shortly after midnight, I take all social media apps off my phone entirely.

The first year I tried simply making a pact with myself not to touch the apps, but unfortunately I quickly realized I had underestimated the power of muscle memory. After the first handful of times accidentally opening Snapchat and staring back at my own disapproving face, I just deleted the apps altogether. The power of habit is a strong one, and nothing is more humbling than your thumbs accidentally opening the ‘notes’ app a dozen times per day because it now sits where Instagram used to be and boredom has me reaching for my phone instinctively. Moral of the story, no apps means no temptation, accidental or otherwise.

The first few days were peaceful. Typically, they are full of “oh, wait” moments as I get used to not being able to check up on the social scene at a moments’ notice. Whether I was just more aware of what to expect since this is year three of the social media cleanse, or I just needed the peace more than years’ past, who knows. Either way, I was pleasantly surprised that the feeling of being out of the loop or lonely didn’t come on as strongly as usual.

Instead, I was able to bask in the little cave that was my social media break. There is a peace that comes with no one knowing what you’re doing. Ironically, we are typically the ones who so openly share what we’re doing with the world. I know it’s no one else’s fault but my own that Instagram knows what my coffee looks like before I even take the first sip. That doesn’t change the fact that it was a nice change to be completely off the grid and know that no one can form a thought or opinion about what you’re putting out into the world, because no one sees it.

I am perpetually guilty of adding stress to my own plate for no real rhyme or reason. My brain personifies as the early 2000’s version of Oprah giving out cars, except instead of Pontiac G-6’s, it’s unrealistic expectations and pressure. (“YOU get a little comparison, YOU get a little self-doubt, YOU get a little fear of never measuring up and YOU get the crippling compulsion to do everything all at once!”) A lot of this has to do with my ongoing perfectionism, the constant thorn in my side. I am not one for doing things half-heartedly. If it’s leg day, I’m going to hit it so hard I’ll need a Life Alert button to get out of bed the next day. If it’s friendship, I’ll be the friend that looks up your Tinder match on Casenet and finds out why he has an outstanding speeding ticket from 2016 (my friends can verify). If it’s Instagram, I want to have the most cohesive feed, the cutest theme and the wittiest captions. While this mentality yields a lot of positive outcome, it also yields a lot of burnout and frustration that the world cannot be conquered in one fell swoop. The examples I gave are all pretty trivial, but they fit into my life on a day to day level. Taking social media out of the equation not only takes out the pressure to be ‘good’ at social media itself (is there such a thing…?) but it takes away the pressure to be good at everything else by eliminating the noise that comes with it.

I have so many friends who are oppressed by the unrealistic expectations and pressures set by the continual presence of social media, yet they can’t seem to break the cycle of its’ constancy. The illusion of a need to stay connected creates its’ own dilemma of being hyperaware of the things happening in everyone’s lives, things that none of us have any business knowing in the first place. If you’re someone who scoffs at the very thought of removing yourself from the social media realm, ask yourself why that is. Is it the fear of missing out on some crucial happening that sends ripples through your social circle? Is it the distaste for wasting a good outfit on a non-photographed day? Or is it something more serious, like the fear of what your mind will fill itself with if it isn’t maxed out with the contents of everyone else’s lives?

As for the FOMO (fear of missing out) that comes with disconnecting, it’s a very empty concern. Odds are that by taking yourself offline, you’ll miss the same snapchats of the same people going to the same bars and hitting the same fast food joint afterwards. You’ll miss the same couples taking the same pictures in the same pose with the same halfheartedly quirky caption “he’s alright I guess”. On a really crazy night, you might miss someone debut their new post-breakup haircut or pregnancy announcement. All in all, odds are that you would spend the time refreshing and waiting for that groundbreaking, can’t-miss content that will probably never come. Time away from social media will not reduce your life to that of a hermit living miles from civilization on the planet Tatooine. If there really is a piece of information you could only find out from Instagram, how important could it really be? Don’t let your fear of potentially being out of the loop of someone else’s life prevent you from taking the steps to be fully present in your own.

As for the distaste about “wasting” an Instagrammable outfit on an Instagram-less day, I am just as guilty as the next person. During this past month, I wore makeup a total of 4 times. It was liberating and my skin thanked me for it. Will I probably always wear makeup and dress up on days I know pictures will be taken? Most definitely, because I generally prefer to look like a female rather than a scrawny version of Shaun White. However, I also recognize that real life will continue to be real life whether or not photographic evidence exists of it. Make sure you are living in a way that produces a fulfilling life, not just pretty pictures.

Finally, ask yourself if you’re just keeping up with your friends’ lives, or if you’re constantly trying to keep up with their lives? The culmination of everyone’s successes and skills all in one place can lend to the illusion that we are inherently subpar. One friend may have gotten a new car, one just graduated, one is engaged, and one is just annoyingly beautiful and never takes a bad photo. Suddenly, the pressure of measuring up in four different and completely unrelated areas is looming over your head. While that ‘win’ may be the only thing going right in each person’s individual life, we take the culmination of every successful moment to come across our feeds and measure ourselves against that impossible standard. It’s no wonder that anxiety is at an all-time high in a society that pushes us to do better, look better, and be better, and to do it all in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Perhaps you aren’t someone who struggles with this, and the whole thing sounds like an overcomplicated mess of unnecessary comparison. You would be absolutely correct. However, as my fellow perfectionists can attest, an anxious mind does not always listen to logic. If you’re someone who knows your life’s calling to a T, are perfectly content with who and what you are with no desire to change or alter your course and have never had a second thought about any of those things, feel free to bottle up whatever sorcery happens in your mind and send some my way. For the rest of us humans, it’s a struggle to find balance and that’s okay.

I was told when I was younger by a track coach whom I adored that it’s important to surround yourself with a few people you can be jealous of “in a good way.” Meaning you should have someone who’s fitness dedication makes you aspire to be more like her, or someone who’s never seen without a contagious smile on their face, and so on. Qualities that make you “jealous” in a constructive way, one that makes you want to improve yourself without taking away from your own self esteem or making you feel lesser.

My opinion on the best approach to social media is very similar. The people you come across on your feed should be people who inspire you, without making you feel less-than. There is a huge, colossal difference between seeing someone and aspiring to improve yourself because you see areas you can work on, versus seeing someone and criticizing or belittling yourself because you see your shortcomings. Half of the battle to find this oh so elusive balance is fought in your own mind. Until you can be okay with yourself, exactly as you are, you will never be okay with yourself in comparison to someone else (let alone the perfected version of someone else that exists solely on the internet). This acceptance comes from your heart and your faith, and cannot be rooted in external things. There is so much more to be said about that topic, but it deserves the spotlight in another set of future ramblings.

This is where disconnecting can be so beneficial for so much more than finally putting Twitter down and falling asleep before 2am. The break allows you to let out a breath you didn’t realize you had been holding. It’s the metaphorical unbuttoning of your pants and finally letting your tummy out because there’s no one around to see. Taking an entire thirty one days away from something that is typically a daily fixture allows you to not only break the habit of checking up on others, but break the habit of expecting affirmation and feedback from the world on your own life. Living each day without the window to the rest of the world allows you to return to the version of yourself that exists when no one is looking, which is the most authentic ‘you’ to exist.

I find it especially refreshing at the beginning of January when my focus is on my own goals for the new year and they deserve my full attention. I like to return to that authentic self, and set my goals strictly based on what is on my heart and what I feel called to do. Not what I feel pressured to do, not what my competitive side wants to prove I can do, and not what I feel like would look good if I did. Taking some time to let the world go quiet allows the things that are important to take center stage in my mind and heart and let me begin this new chapter with clarity and the affirmation that I am pursuing purposeful and important things for my own story.

I will probably never be the kind of person who goes to sleep at night, perfectly content with all that I did that day. I will always think of one more thing I wish I had done, one thing I could have done better, one thing I will add tomorrow. That’s just who I am, and that’s okay. The existence of social media did not create this issue within me, it just exacerbates it by making the comparison game far too easy. Even if the Insta-revolution had never been born, I would likely still wake up and grapple with these same things. However, in a world where social media is somewhat of a permanent fixture, it’s become crucial to learn to deal with its’ effects.

Like I said before, if you’re someone who can’t relate to even a shred of what I’m saying, congratulations on being perfect. Please direct me to the well of self-assurance that you must drink from every day and leave the rest of us to our grappling. Wrestling with the question of why social media is so “necessary” has lead me to a lot of important realizations in my own life, and I will continue to take January off each year to have these hard talks with myself and set the tone for a year of soulful improvement. The most growth comes from the most discomfort, and I’m not just talking about being forced to play an eleventh round of solitaire while waiting for my morning coffee because I have nothing else to look at on my phone. Being left to your own thoughts challenges you to regain touch with the person you are independently from the world’s prompting. There is no one on this planet more worth deeply knowing than yourself. Do yourself the favor of looking inward for a change, the outside world can wait.

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Thank you, once again, for reading the words that come straight from my heart to this website. I am humbled and heart-warmed every time someone chooses to read my crazy ramblings. XOXO