I was at a restaurant last week with my best friend. We were meeting up with my friend James, who was already at our destination. En route, I got a text from James saying: “Get here now! There are people I just met at the bar who I want to introduce you to!” My first thought was “Oy.” Don’t get me wrong, I basically socialize and network for a living and I love it with every fiber of my being. But that night, I just wanted to drink some wine, catch-up with my girlfriend and go home early. However, in my line of business, I can never refuse meeting new people. (Or James for that matter, who is my number one fan.) As soon as we arrived, James saunters up excitedly with two even more excited looking girls.
“Are you Jessica from CheekyChicago?” one of them asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Your blogs have changed my life,” she said.
What proceeded, perhaps, has changed mine.
Her name was Amy. She had met James just 20 minutes earlier, was making conversation and randomly brought up how she recently found this great new website and read this blog by a girl named Jessica. (James is one of my best friends. What are the chances?) Amy then went on for 10 minutes telling me how inspired she is by what I have written, how my blogs single-handedly made her feel less alone, how they gave her clarity she couldn’t get from her own girlfriends, that she forwarded them onto her friends in other countries, and how immensely she admired my courage.
I need to take a moment here and clarify….as tears literally just welled up in my eyes…that this isn’t a blog dedicated to patting myself on the back. This is a blog dedicated to you, the women who actually take the time out of your extremely busy lives to read my over-emotional, self-indulgent relationship rants and woes. I need to say how deeply humbled, grateful and inspired I am by the fabulous, amazing, beautiful, passionate, intelligent, honest, emotional, kind, brave Cheeky women I have had the fortune of meeting this past year.
Another true story: I was listening to Pandora.com the other day. I somewhat recently discovered this website, which is ironic or sad (depending how you look at it), considering I spend half of my life on the web. In case you don’t know about Pandora (and no one is judging, believe you me), it’s an online radio program that customizes an endless playlist based on an artist or song of your choice. You can “like” or “dislike” whatever Pandora chooses for you and the longer you listen, the more customized the music stream becomes to your personal taste. Last week I was feeling a little introspective and clicked on A Fine Frenzy, one of my favorite female singer-songwriters. If you haven’t heard of her, think Fiona Apple meets Norah Jones with a touch of Joni Mitchell. Get the picture? Anyway, song after song of female voices streamed through my tiny computer speakers. And as I half-listened to Natalie Walker, Keri Noble, Imogen Heap, Missy Higgins and beyond, it dawned on me. They were all singing about the same thing. Love, heartbreak and healing.
In that instant, I thought to myself just how fundamentally, intrinsically, amazingly connected we are as women. Each one of our stories is no doubt unique, complex and deeply personal. But at the end of the day (or at the end of the relationship, if you will), women experience love and loss in a similar capacity. We cry a little deeper, analyze a little harder and hurt for a little longer. But I believe that’s what makes us so amazing. We are so astoundingly phenomenal at healing. Why? Because we aren’t afraid to self-examine.
And let’s face it, self-realization and self-awareness isn’t pretty. Most of the time, it’s just plain miserably awful. But the digging deep … which usually leads to the unraveling … which leads to the falling apart … is what leads to the self-discovery … the redefining of who you really are … the realization of your own flaws … the understanding of your own mistakes … and what you ultimately, honestly want. It is the juiciest, deliciously empowering, golden nugget epicenter of it all.
The last few months have been some of the most amazing past few months I’ve had in a year. I haven’t felt this awake…this alive…this aware of myself…maybe ever. For sooooo many reasons. But one of the main reasons is that I finally discovered that the one thing I thought would make me happy was the one thing that was holding me back.
I will never allow myself to be someone’s emotional punching bag ever again. Nor will I ever commit myself to someone who isn’t self-aware themselves, someone who exists in the same place (both literally and figuratively), lives in denial and repeats the same exact lifestyle and relationship patterns year after year. The day you say to yourself you are done working on self-awareness, digging deeper and creating space for self-change is the day you have missed the entire boat. And baby, my ship has sailed.
See you girls, (especially Amy), out there in the deep, wide, beautiful sea.
