A conversation with my younger self (and Meredith Grey)

The other day, when my friend Sara asked what my writing plan was, I told her that I was going to use this prompt from For Women Who Roar:

If you could sit with yourself from when you were a child, what would you say?

It seems so cliché — the therapy scene where you sit down and are asked to talk about your upbringing. You know. Heal your inner child and all that crap. And it's easy to dismiss the past when you want to deal with the issues at present...but it's also impossible to separate the two.

Because all of the experiences we have today are based on what we learned in the past, and the way that we make sense of those experiences has everything to do with what we create for ourselves in the future.

To get where you want to go, you have to know where you've been.

But remembering is a funny thing. The brain doesn't work like a computer, fetching a video for you to watch for a real time play-by-play, even though that's kind of how we think about it.

Memory is much more fluid than that, and constantly evolving — the way that we store details depends on what was happening at the time, and the way that we recall the experience is heavily rooted in how we feel in the moment of re-telling.

Human memory is far from perfect in its accuracy to detail, but I think the stories we tell contain a lot more information than objective facts alone. And I find that incredibly interesting.

Anyway. Back to Kid Justine.

When I was a kid, I wanted to do things the "right" way.

Give me a rubric to follow, and I was happy.

With clear expectations, I knew exactly what to do to get the approval of the adults in my life — I've been an achiever for as long as I can remember.

I viewed life as a series of checks on a list of accomplishments, and I was determined to stay on track for success. And for many years, I didn't stop to ask myself what exactly I was after — I was pursuing goals based on what I saw play out around me. So the story of adulting that I'd internalized included:

My net worth + physical possessions = a measure of my value
The age that I got married = a reflection of my desirability and worth
When I had kids = a feeling of wholeness and contentment

But by the time I'd done the things I thought I was supposed to do to unlock the adulting level of achievement I was after, I didn't feel the way that I thought I would.

I never really feel the way I think I will

But different isn't a bad thing.

So what does all of this have to do with what I would say to my younger self?

Well. I'd tell her exactly what Meredith Grey told me:

No one believes their life will turn out just kind of ok. We all think we’re going to be great and from the day we decide to be surgeons, we are filled with expectations.

Expectations of the trails we will blaze, the people we will help, the difference we will make. Great expectations of who we will be, where we will go, and then we get there.…We all think we are going to be great and we feel a little bit robbed when our expectations aren’t met but sometimes our expectations sell us short.

Sometimes the expected simply pales to the unexpected.

You gotta wonder why we cling to our expectations. Because the expected is just what keeps us steady, standing, still.

The expected is just the beginning. The unexpected is what changes our lives.

Granted, I never had dreams of being a surgeon. But substitute that for expectations of security and domestic bliss, and that's the conversation that I would want to have with my younger self. Because it's the conversation I am still having with myself today.

One about the expectations that I have, why I have them, and what really might be on the other side of them. Because as far as the "adulting achievements" so far, the reality is:

There is no amount of earning that will provide me with self-worth
A promise of lifelong commitment from another human will not give me security
Having kids will not magically turn me into a blissed out, maternal, domestic goddess

None of this feels the way I thought it would.

And that's okay.

Because there's the choices you make that get you to this point, and then there's the ones that you make next.

There is nothing wrong with experience providing you with information that you can learn from, and there's nothing wrong with unlearning things along the way — things that don't serve you the way that you expected them to. Because as my friend Meredith also says,

It can be scary to find out you've been wrong about something. But we can't be afraid to change our minds, to accept that things are different, that they'll never be the same, for better or for worse.

We have to be willing to give up what we used to believe.The more we're willing to accept what is and not what we thought, we'll find ourselves exactly where we belong.

Where does that leave this conversation with my younger self?

Letting her know that there really is no right way to do life. And that fighting to be certain and right is futile. Because the willingness to question, to be wrong and to change your mind...

That's where you'll find what you really want.

Expectations are just the beginning. It's where you go next that matters.