Freaks and Geeks

 

It’s the spooky season in the Watson Johnson house, and we are eating up all of our favorites, which include (but are not limited to) Hocus Pocus, Ghostbusters, Halloweentown, E.T., Hotel Transylvania, The Munsters, The Addams Family, and (finally, for the first time) Scream.

 

As such, my apologies for the Christmas spreadsheet being late- my brain isn’t in Christmas mode yet. (Although, allow me to assure you that the moment we hit November 1, the Christmas playlist will be on and I will gladly consume any movie that includes “mistletoe” in the title.)

Christmas Movies 2020

 

Anyway, anyway….

I don't talk about politics on the blog even though, as my therapist says, it's my jam. As the wonky nerd that I am though I will talk until my final breath about how important it is for you to vote. Vote 411 is a great resource to learn more about your ballot choices before you vote. 

 

 

The Bible Binge: Faith Adjacent

Purity Culture

 

I adore this spinoff from my beloved Bible Binge podcast, in which Erin Moon searches for biblical “reception in unlikely places.” I mentioned a couple of blog posts ago, I have been really pondering my own experience with purity culture. This podcast spoke to so many experiences of my youth, holding them up to the light without making fun of them, just searching for truth and meaning- all of it engrossing, in my opinion.

 

 

The SSR Podcast

Episode 117: Meet Kirsten

 

SSR is one of my most favorite ever podcasts, in which Alli Hoff Kosik and a guest read young adult literature (normally from their own youth) and reexamine it in light of adult minds and perspectives. I was excited for this episode with Kate Kennedy from the Be There In Five podcast (I truly love Be There in Five but-important caveat- Kate’s episodes are so long, often two hours, I have to really prepare myself to pay attention for that long to just Kate alone talking- I’m sure that says something about my attention span).

 

I was just honestly jazzed because this was an American Girl book. My Samantha doll remains to this day my favorite gift ever, and I own all of the Kirsten books, so I was familiar with her story. Alli and Kate dig deep into American Girl and its origins and subsequent buyout by Mattel. It’s all fascinating in the best way.

 

Open Book by Jessica Simpson

 

I’m only halfway through listening to this on Audible and I’m loving it so much I have to gush about it on here. I watched Nick and Jessica’s television show and always felt such affinity for Nick-he was closer to my age, and it always seemed that he was the mature one. Listening to Jessica’s story is captivating. She doesn’t deny at all her mistakes, but it is so fascinating to understand where she was coming from, what her life was like leading up to her stardom, how much making a reality show truly changed the course of her life. I’m forever and always interested in other people’s lives (which is why memoirs are my thing), and of course throw in divorce and I will devour it.

We are heading into the darkest days, and in this crazy year everything feels anxious around the edges. I'm holding onto this time with my girls full of movies and books and nights in and trying to learn the dance to BTS' "Dynamite." Which is harder than it looks.

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

 

18 years ago today it was raining (not quite as dreary a day as today, but it was raining). My grandma told me that was good luck. (It wasn’t, obviously, but when I am a grandma, I will say the same thing.)

 

Every year, on this particular day, I write a blog post that mostly I don’t post.

 

5 years on seems like a good time to let them live.

 

From 2017:

“The thing is, as I have mentioned, I waited a really long time to meet someone and fall in love with them. I didn't wait patiently. I prayed and wished and hoped for love to hit me over the head like a sledgehammer and I exasperated everyone around me because I was forever talking about wanting to fall in love and get married and that's exhausting and boring after a while. I didn't have a plan for my life.

 

Enter Nick.

 

Enter exactly everything you ever wanted all in one fell swoop.

 

It was so very fairytaleish.

 

It makes everything much more complicated than it surely needs to be.”

 

From 2018:

 

“I had a revelation today.

 

(To begin, I talk to myself in the car in the mornings, unless I am on the phone. Most days, I actually am on the phone. But when I’m not, I yammer to myself.)

 

Anyway, a revelation.

 

I said, “I am trying to learn to love someone without losing myself in the process.”

 

And then I just sat there for a minute.

 

Because, you know, what the heck?

 

I know all of the correct things to say about this-things that I say to my girls, about being strong women, about finding their passions. I have spent this past year doing all the brave things, trying new things, falling down and getting back up and all the things.

 

But here is a brave thing: I’m going to be very honest in this space. When I met Nick, and he fell in love with me, I tangled myself all up in that feeling, that idea that someone wanted to build a life with me, wanted to have children with me-and that’s as it should be, of course. I married someone who was my very best friend at the time, who I just adored-I had never been in love before and I found it intoxicating.

 

My marriage came apart in pieces. You know that metaphor about boiling a frog? How, if you want to boil a frog, place it in the pan and let the water slowly rise and it doesn’t know to jump out? That is the best way that I know of to describe how my marriage came to be in pieces without me even completely realizing it. Because, of course, looking back everything seems obvious.

 

But somewhere recently I read something that said, if you don't feel safe enough to yell back, you're not safe enough.

 

 

It all dovetails-my personality is that I want to be the best, so naturally I wanted to be the best wife. Mix that with genuine adoration and trust and faith in happy endings, and just what I always wanted, always, for as long as I could remember, and my beautiful girls and our family, and it just”

 

(That’s where I ended it.)

 

From 2019:

“I don’t know how to teach Betsy how to navigate dating-how to flirt, or how to figure out if a boy is interested in you, or any of those things. I feel completely useless to her.

 

The lack of instincts that I have around any of that is somewhat astounding.

 

In the before, I would have simply told her that when you actually fall in love, everything just falls into place. That was my experience. Nick Johnson came along and swept me off my feet and life was never the same again. It didn’t matter about flirting or dating really or any of those things-because I met Nick and I just knew that he was who I had been missing.

 

In the after, I am left with this notion that mostly that wasn’t the best way to go about falling in love. I should have questioned more, I should have concentrated on figuring out who I was instead of just who I was as Nick’s wife.

 

Divorce is just such a tangle of emotions-it’s like living beyond the end of a fairy tale into the cold light of day, and realizing that a lot of what I believed to be the truth that I built my life on was a lie. It takes all that I have not to go into this explanation every time I tell anyone that I’m divorced-we did all the right things. We had date nights, we were best friends, we were all the things. And it still didn’t work out.

 

My marriage taught me that there is no guarantee to love. We wake up every morning and chose to love that person that we are with. Which is an amazing notion when this other person is choosing to be with you, and”

 

(That’s the end of that one. No idea at all what the rest of that sentence was.)

 

In the end, it’s just that I want to remember. I didn’t post these at the time because my feelings are always so raw around this particular memory. Even as it has changed and evolved and twisted into what exists today. I can't put to words what it is today. Maybe next year.