The Honeymoon: A Debrief

I would like to make a social proof.

I think social media has made it really easy for us to fib about our lives.  It seems as if there is a secret code you must follow while using social media, which is:  "Ye must only share the good parts of your life."  And because we all follow this secret code, we get to thinking that everyone else's life really does only have good parts.  Allow me to share a valuable piece of information with you:

Everyone's life has sucky parts.

Hard to believe right?  Well, it's true.  Even when things look freaking AMAZING and you are so painfully jealous of someone in particular, believe it or not, they more likely than not have problems of their own to deal with.  They have sucky parts too.  And they could be even more sucky than yours.  They are probably just following the secret code of social media really well.

So allow me to prove all of this to you:

Three days after getting married, my sweet new husband and I set off for a two month honeymoon in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.  After 24 hours of travelling, this is how we felt:

Finally, we arrived in the Galapagos Islands.

We spent two weeks on the Islands.  Instead of staying at a hotel, we decided to rent a villa instead!  So we had an entire house all to ourselves.

And our house even had a rooftop terrace!

I loved reading up there in the hammock.  This was the view from the terrace:

Our favorite place to go swimming was only a 10 minute walk.  It was called Las Grietas.  It was a great place to go cliff jumping!

We loved to go exploring on the beautiful Tortuga Bay.

We also saw lots of cool wildlife.  Like seals.

And blue-footed boobies.

Jon really liked the boobies.

We also saw giant turtles.

Jon liked to pose for funny pictures.

I preferred to take pictures like this.

Jon's favorite part of the trip was shopping.

All in all, we loved the Galapagos Islands.

Then we went to mainland Ecuador and visited Jon's family.  We spent lots of time with Juan's Grandparents.

They took us to see neat things like his Grandpa's farm where he grew sugar cane.

And the mountains where his horses roamed.

Jon got to go repelling.

And we saw lots of cool waterfalls.

We also ate neat food!

We're so grateful we got to travel.

And that Jon got to spend time with his family.

Ecuador was fantastic.

Alrighty.  That was me following the secret code of social media.  Didn't my honeymoon look amazing?  I hope you're jealous.

Now to break some rules.  I'm going to tell the truth.  

My honeymoon is hands down one of the hardest trials I've been through to this day.

Literally, every single day of this trip you just glimpsed into was a battle to be happy.  I had to battle my mind, Jon had to battle how crazy I was going, and we had to battle to keep our love for one another afloat.  What we thought would be two months of newly wedded bliss actually turned out to be one and a half months of psychological warfare.  Because we came home early.  That's how hard things got.

It's so easy to smile for pictures and to share the good parts of your life.  But telling the truth, that's a little more difficult.  And I still can't figure out why.  Because I'm finding that once you share your burdens and troubles with others, that's when you will receive strength through their service and kind words.  That's when dealing with your problems becomes easiest.

I think it's because we associate admitting we have problems and that our life isn't perfect with weakness.  I know I did until recently.  

Since deciding to be bold and sharing my trials with Depression on my blog, I've been the grateful and unexpected recipient of so many kind words, it's unbelievable.  I've had a handful of women, ranging from closet blog followers to good friends, reach out with the sage advice that I go off birth control, if I'm on it.  (I'm not on birth control... I'm just naturally crazy, haha)  I've had friendly well wishes and had friends, and even acquaintances, share their own trials with me.  

I'm beginning to think that the greatest weakness a person could have is the inability to admit they have weaknesses.  I feel so much stronger and happier since admitting to myself and the world that I have weaknesses.

Honestly, I think I could be on to something here.  If you want to feel strong, admit that you are weak.

Move Out Of Your Head, And Into Your Heart.

I heard this story at church yesterday.  I couldn't help but feel like it describes my life perfectly right now.  It's called "God's Embroidery."

When I was a little child, my mother used to embroider a great deal.  I would sit at her knee and look up from the floor and ask what she was doing.  She informed me that she was embroidering.  As from the underside I watched her work within the boundaries of the little round hoop that she held in her hand, I complained to her that it sure looked messy from where I sat.

She would smile at me, look down and gently say, "Child, you go about your playing for a while, and when I am finished with my embroidering, I will put you on my knee and let you see it from my side."

I would wonder why she was using some dark threads along with the bright ones and why they seemed so jumbled from my view.  A few minutes would pass and then I would hear my Mother's voice say, "Child, come and sit on my knee."  This I did only to be surprised and thrilled to see a beautiful flower or a sunset.  I could not believe it, because from the underneath it looked so messy.

Then Mother would say to me, "My child, from underneath it did look messy and jumbled, but you did not realize that there was a pre-drawn plan on the top.  It was a design.  I was only following it.  Now look at it from my side and you will see what I was doing."

Many times through the years I have looked up to my Heavenly Father and said, "Father, what are You doing?"  He has answered, "I am embroidering your life."  I say, "But it looks like a mess to me.  It seems so jumbled.  The threads seem so dark.  Why can't they all be bright?"  The Father seems to tell me, "My child, you go about your business of doing My business, and one day I will bring you to Heaven and put you on My knee and you will see the plan from My side."

My life is messy right now.

And I am patiently awaiting the day when it will all make sense.

- - - - -

Sometimes it's so tough to distinguish between what is marriage and what is depression, because they both came into my life at the same time.  It wasn't until we had been married for about two months that I was diagnosed with depression; which means I had established a habit of blaming all the pain and sadness I was feeling on the fact that I was married.  While struggling to transition all my blame and anguish from marriage to depression, I received some priceless advice from a most beloved old roommate:  My uncle Robb.  He told me to:

"Move out of your head, and into your heart."

He was completely right.  Since depression had taken me hostage, I had been spending nearly every waking second in my head.  I could spend hours stewing on how my life was over; mourning the loss of my car and dream job; longing for my family and home; essentially just listing all the reasons I had to be sad.  Which strangely enough only made me more sad.  And put a huge barrier between the hubby and myself.

So I tried packing up and moving to my heart.  Instead of thinking, I tried feeling.  Instead of listing all my problems, I tried listening to other people's problems.  Instead of analyzing my new life, I tried feeling for the love in my marriage.  Before long, I started to feel like my old self again.  Happy. 

I'll admit, things haven't suddenly been perfect since moving into my heart, I've had my setbacks and there are definitely days when I retreat back into my head.  However, I'm beginning to see how life is supposed to be lived.  In the heart.

To the brain, the back of the embroidery can sometimes look completely illogical and preposterous.  It could take quite awhile to think yourself through what it's trying to be, and you'll undoubtedly isolate yourself along the way.  It's so much better to let yourself feel the excitement of the unknown, to cherish each strand, and to embrace that no matter what, in the end the picture is going to make sense and be beautiful.  

Home really is where the heart is.

Taking a History of Vandalism to the Next Level.

I have no problem with spray painting.  Old sheds that is.

I grew up in a place where there were plenty of old sheds.  And as a Mormon kid dying for some kind of rebellious outlet, I took up spray painting them.  How BA is that?!?!  Allow me to share my portfolio with you:

Exhibit One:  First spray job ever.  Since spray painting is so rebellious, we decided to leave a message somewhat uplifting.  As we were all amateurs, the Mercedes-Benz logo instead of a Peace Sign should be considered excusable.  

Exhibit Two:  Taking things to the next level with the second spray job ever.  Still a somewhat uplifting message (where I'm from the high school rivalries are comparable to world wars), encouraging peace and friendship betwixt the small town enemies.  But to top it all off, we labelled it all as "Gay Pride".  Pretty rebellious right?

Exhibit Three:  Third and last spray job.  The same crew as spray job number one got together to repaint our first shed.  It was a reunion of sorts, since a couple of the friends had just returned from missions.  So we opted for a punny remake of our first.  And we even got the peace sign right this time.

Anyways, I think you get the picture that I'm pretty hard core.  A down right delinquent, if you will.  

Well, on our honeymoon, Juan and I were feeling quite destructive.  We rented a villa for the two weeks we were there, so we had an entire house to ourselves.  And we wanted to "make it ours", if you will.  So we blew up the stove.  Cool right?

Okay, fine, not cool.  I'm just trying really hard to pretend like we did it on purpose.  Because that way we look really hard core.  And also, so our IQ's won't look quite so far below 50 after you find out how we managed to blow up the stove within our first hour of arriving at the villa.  

So, how the story goes, we had just arrived at our villa after half a day of exhausting and extensive travelling.  We were tired, yet most of all, we were hungry.  Our nice landlord had left some pancake mix and eggs in the fridge for us.  So my kind and loving husband started to make us a midday breakfast of champions.  

It took a bit to figure how to work the gas stove, but pretty soon we had 'er lit up and were cooking away on the glass top.  

Let me tell you, it gets mighty hot cooking on a gas stove in a sans air conditioned house on a desert island.  So I slipped away from the cooking to prop our little rotating fan up on the corner of the table before returning back to the stove.

After a minute or two, that stinking fan blew itself off the table with a loud crash.  I rushed over to see if it had broken, and Juan followed shortly.

That's when it happened.  BOOM.  The stove exploded.  Or at least the glass top of the stove exploded.  All over the kitchen.  And all in our food.  Juan tip-toed through the wreckage to turn the gas off.  And then we just stood there.  In shock.

Please notice the glass all over the floor.  And the hinges at the back...

We eventually gained our composure and began to investigate.  That's when we realized the glass top was actually a cover.  A lid.  A topper.  That was supposed to be lifted off the burners when one began cooking.  Oh....  I mean, yeah, we knew that.  We just wanted to see what would happen if you cooked on top of it.  Now we know that it explodes when you do that.

Thankfully, our landlord was nice about it.  He didn't even make us pay for it.  I think he too was in shock that somebody would actually think you could cook on top of the glass cover.  I'm sure Juan and I have gone down in history at that villa as the dumb Canadian tourists that blew up the stove.  

Little do they know, we meant to cause we're hard core!!!   

Okay, fine, we didn't mean too.  Don't judge us.

I'll Be Brave

I believe it's fair to say that my life has changed quite a bit during the past three months.

On May 4th, I got married.

Then on May 7th, my husband Juan and I flew to Ecuador for a two month honeymoon.

During our two week stint on the Galapagos Islands something happened.  I changed.  No you weirdos, I didn't get pregnant.  I got sad.  Down right melancholy.  At first I thought I was homesick, so I let my head fill it self with thoughts of back home and all that I was missing there.  For example,

THE COUNTRY

MY OLD JOB

WATERTON

MY FAMILY

Pretty soon the list was a million miles long.  And then I concluded another thing was making me so upset.  I was no longer free.  My freedom was gone.  Or at least I thought it was.  So I pouted about that for a few days too.  

As this terrible mood began to take over, I literally turned into a fun-sucking honeymoon-ruiner.  My mind was so full of unhappy, pessimistic thoughts that I began to even question myself getting married in the first place.  Because it was marriage that was making me so unhappy, right?

I feel awful admitting this, but after our stay on the Galapagos, things only managed to get worse.  I continued to be a fun-sucking, party-pooping, mood-killing wife.  I feel comfortable in calling the person I was back then nothing short than a female version of Satan.  It soon became clear that going home early was a necessity for both of our sanity, well-being, and sadly enough, even our young little marriage.

Fortunately for me, I have a good mother.  The first thing she made me do when I came home was see a doctor.  I told him my story.  Then he chuckled and told me I have Depression.  Well that sounds like fun.  How do I get rid of it?

I wish I could say that things got better immediately after seeing that doctor and getting that diagnosis.  But I'll be brave and admit that it didn't.  Things went down before they came back up.  And I'll be brave enough to admit that.

I'll be brave.

I've changed the look of my blog.  A little.  Quite a bit.  Okay, maybe a lot.  Since beginning this journey of marriage, and then depression, I've realized that nearly everyone goes through really tough stuff.  Except we never seem to talk about those things.  Maybe it's against social norms.  Or maybe it's because we're embarrassed.  Or maybe it's simply because we're too scared to openly speak about that side of our life.

Since going through this challenge, I've been absolutely amazed to find out about how many people have gone through a trial quite similar to mine.  Things like having a tough honeymoon or rocky start to a marriage seem to be unthinkable or even outlandish.  Probably because it's supposed to be magical right?  It is the "honeymoon phase", is it not?  

Hearing stories similar to mine has helped a lot.  I'm not alone in my battle with depression, and Juan and I are not alone in our fight to make marriage magical.  Why then, have all these stories been kept secret?!  

I've decided to start a revolution.  I'm not going to keep my story quiet.  I'm not going to keep a blog that leads everyone on to believe that my life is full of perfect outfits, amazing hairstyles, delicious home-cooked meals, cute decorating, and never-ending romance with my husband.  I'm going to be brave.  I'm going to tell things like they are, and love life regardless.  

I'm done with trying to live what everyone perceives as "real-life".  It seems like all the "real" things are kept quiet in "real-life".  Which is why I'm going to embark on what I have deemed as "near-life".  All aspects of life deserve to be addressed.  The bad just as much as the good.  Because it's all the parts coming together which makes life this magical and exciting experience is it not?