you'd already be dressed.

This story is about going on a date, but it’s not actually about that. It’s about much more than that — listening to your gut, burrowing deep into your knowing, and being sure enough of it to trust it.

It was the fall of 2018. I’d recently moved to the Fargo-Moorhead area, I’d started a new job, and I’d re-downloaded Tinder for the who-knows-how-many-ith time.

This “download, swipe, delete” is a common storyline for women in their 20s. It’s a throughline that connects every single millennial woman and the reality that showcases the complicated ways we try to find connection in this world. Download, swipe, delete. Pause. Download, swipe, go on a date, delete. Repeat.

We hear this story from another woman. We nod. We understand. It’s rough out there, especially on the screens. There are men with large fish and men with large egos, men with only shirtless selfies and men surrounded by other men so you don’t actually know which man is the one named Derek or Zach or Joe. So when you find someone you’re excited to talk to and get to know, it feels rare. Because it is.

One weekend while visiting Megan in the Twin Cities, I was in a “download” phase. I had Tinder on my phone and swiped a bit. I matched with someone and felt that excited buzz. I did not live in the Twin Cities at the time, but I was upfront about that. We texted quite a bit on the app. Then we moved to actual texting. Then we added Snapchat to the mix and the fact that we can communicate with humans in our lives on countless apps is one of the most exhausting parts of being human in this era.

Jack (we’ll call him Jack) was funny and witty and kind. He had a socially-conscious job. He had hobbies that were intriguing — hiking and board games and listening to NPR. He seemed to exhibit emotional intelligence and there was not a single fish in his profile photos. I thought, “Huh!”

So, the next time I was in the Twin Cities, I decided to meet Jack. We’d go out for dinner and drinks that evening, around 6:00pm. It was a plan. It was a date!

Except, all of a sudden it was 4:30pm, and I was still sitting on Megan’s couch. I hadn’t showered, though I desperately needed one. The five outfit options I’d brought with me were still tucked away in my suitcase. My nails, which I’d vowed to paint before this date, were still chipped.

I told Megan that I wanted to go, but I was still sitting here because I was just nervous! And because it’d been a while since I’d dated! And because the last person I’d talked to on this dating app had sent me not 7, not 8, but 13 messages in a row once before I finally responded. I told Megan that I’d get up and start getting ready so soon. I’d get up in just a few. It was only 5:15pm at this point; I still had a solid 30 minutes!

Her reply? 

“If you wanted to go, you’d already be dressed.”

As soon as Megan said these words to me, I nodded and thought, “Huh.” Because how many times in my life have I been so excited for something, so ready to go, that I could hardly wait another instant? The night before school when it’s impossible to go to bed. The moments before publishing something on my blog. Even other dates, where I showed up 15 minutes too early and awkwardly waited in my car for 21 minutes so I could walk in a casual and acceptable five minutes late.

But there I was, unprepared and unshowered and, apparently, unenthused about this date. My body and my gut were telling me that I didn’t want to go; I had to let my mind catch up before I accepted it.

Now, I’m sure if I had gone on that date, it would have been fine. I did feel like a bit of an asshole for cancelling so soon before. I apologized profusely and explained what was my truth: I thought I was ready and feeling it, but I was wrong. My body was telling me so. I couldn’t show up and fake it.

And that’s become the threshold — reminder — for trusting my gut. Would I already be dressed? Because in this decade, I’ve learned that my gut is almost always right — especially with romance. 

It’ll tell me when I should keep moving forward even when it doesn’t make sense, like dating someone who was moving across the country two days later. “Do it,” my gut said. It’ll be worth it!” And it was.

It’ll tell me when I should step back or stop, like when I went on a blind date with someone who spent 45 minutes telling me about how the Illuminati was controlling the Earth (and that the Earth was actually a snow globe!). “Evacuate!” my gut said. “You do not have to stay and listen to this!” So I left.

I’m amazed at how often I try to convince myself the opposite of what my body and my gut tell me. It’s not always that simple and laid out there for us, but sometimes — it just is. Sometimes all we have to do is get quiet, listen, and ask our own version of the question:

Would I already be dressed?

the miley cyrus bikini from walmart.

Since I’m on a cleaning-out-my-”Writing Drafts”-folder kick, I’m sharing a post that I started (and, surprisingly, finished) in 2015. Beyond my Drafts folder on Google Drive, it’s actually been sitting as a Draft on my website since then, too. I never published it because it felt vulnerable in a different way than some of my other writing did; a little too vulnerable compared to thoughts about love and faith and vocation.

This is a post about my body.

I’ve been hesitant to share this with the world because bodies are sacred and bodies are complicated. Our bodies are our temples, but they are often temples that we wish were a little thinner, curvier, lighter, tanner, something-different-than-what-they-are. We wish we had a temple other than our own. What I wrote in this post resonated with me, and I was nervous to put that in the world for fear it wouldn’t resonate with others. There was fear of writing the “wrong” thing about body image, of being judged for having these particular thoughts about my body, of making it known that I struggled with negative thoughts about my body that translated into something bigger than just “negative thoughts,” and that those morphed into a deep wrestling with my worth. I wasn’t ready to share this as it was all happening in 2015 -- the thoughts, the struggle, the therapy, the slow and draining work of moving through it all -- but I am now.

This post doesn’t ring quite as true to me anymore. I’m in a different kind of relationship with my body these days, one where I move it often and challenge it because that feels fun and good, one where I marvel at how strong it feels when I run and lift, one where I feel comfortable and confident in a way I never have before. And yet, some of this writing still does ring true.

My hope with finally sending this into the interwebs — as with all writing — is to shine the flashlight on the dark, messy parts of life, so that we can meet there and recognize that we’re not alone in that darkness. That, actually, we’ve never been alone at all.

--

I went to the coast a few weekends ago. The night before we left, I went to the website through which we had rented our cozy cabin. After reading the reviews and browsing through the accommodations list, I discovered the greatest hidden treasure in the history of girls’ weekends everywhere: THERE WAS A HOT TUB.

My heart immediately started doing the quick-feet, shuffle-around, happy dance. I opened our message thread and typed, “THERE IS A HOT TUB!” I envisioned sinking into the 103-degree, chlorinated water; pushing back into the high-powered jets for a free massage; letting the sunshine or the moonlight hit my face as I entered into full relaxation mode. I don’t claim to know what heaven looks like, but for an often-stressed full-time AmeriCorps volunteer, that hot tub was going to feel pretty close to it. Add a glass of red wine and best friends within arm’s reach, and it’d be like sitting next to Jesus himself.

But then, almost as quickly as I had started the hot tub dance, I stopped. A deep, loud, echoing voice came over the loudspeakers of my brain and said one word: bikini. My once-dancing heart quickly stopped; I morphed into an embarrassed 8th grader at her first school dance: shuffling over to stand by the wall, staring at her pigeon-toed feet, peering up through her needs-to-be-cut-(and-probably-washed) bangs, wondering why she came to this stupid dance in the first place. 

Because, in order to enjoy the hot tub, my body was going to have to put on a bikini. And I had not bought a new bikini since high school. 

I vividly remember making this bikini purchase. It was the summer before my senior year and I waltzed into one of the Fargo Walmart stores and found this strapless, ruffled Miley Cyrus bikini on sale. I would love to say that I bought it because it was an emergency: that I was on my way out of town, and there were no other stores around that carried bikinis, and that this particular bikini was the only one left in the entire store. But no. I voluntarily walked into a Walmart and bought a Miley Cyrus swimsuit.

I would also love to say that my swimsuit choice was the only reason that caused me to have such a strong reaction to my brain’s loudspeakers blaring “bikini.” But that would be lying, too. Because a lot has changed since 2008, including how I feel in that bikini.

Even though I knew that it was normal for my body to be different than it was in 2008, to have changed and gained and lost and grown, my initial reaction was some combination of “Shit. Damn. I don’t want to wear a bikini. Especially not this bikini. I don’t want people to see me in a bikini. Would it be weird if I just wore my clothes into the hot tub?”

It’s a shitty feeling, to question how you look and how you think other people think you look. It’s an even shittier feeling when that questioning and doubting about your body turns into questioning and doubting about you — all of you. Your worth, your enough-ness, your value as a human. There are hundreds of books and millions of words from folks who write about this struggle; the pressures from society and magazines and the omnipresent “them” who says we are to be a certain way. And, even more so, books and words about the pressure and unrealistic expectations we put on ourselves. The battle between logic (2008 was over SEVEN years ago! Of course my body is different.) and these subconscious beliefs about how we “should” look and feel and be turn into a constant loop.

But I packed the bikini anyway, right next to the muffled loudspeaker voice whispering “bikini.” And on that Saturday at the coast, when we decided to go into the hot tub, I pulled it (the bikini, not the loudspeaker voice) out of the corner of my duffel bag. I slowly pulled the two pieces of flowery, white fabric over my body. And then, armed with a glass of wine and two best friends, I went to the back patio. I felt the water with my free hand and remembered my initial reaction to the hot tub: chlorine! massage! relaxation! I balanced my drink on the ledge and shook off my cover-up.

Was I self-conscious about how my 24-year-old body looked in the bikini I bought for my 17-year-old body? Yes. Did the loudspeaker voice creep back in as I dropped my cover-up and stepped into the hot tub? Yes. Did I get in anyway? Yes.

There are shitty feelings that enter into our brains. This is a reality for humans everywhere, and those feelings come in about all sorts of things. Our jobs! Our families! Remembering that time we accidentally chased someone down on the street because we thought it was someone else! Our bodies! Our bodies.

This one’s especially present for women, for a lot of reasons: we live in a heteropatriarchal society that places our value and worth on how we look. How much we weigh. How our bodies look in bikinis and skinny jeans and tank tops. I was able to shut up the loudspeaker voice this one time, but the shitty feelings will inevitably enter again. And again and again.

But it’s an even shittier feeling to stay away from the hot tub, keeping your clothes on while everyone else splashes around. To stay against the wall at the school dance, watching everyone else do the Cha Cha Slide. To spend your time wishing that your temple was a little bit like hers, or that if you were just skinnier/more toned/tanner/anything different than who you are, that’s when life would -- poof! -- be different. That’s finally when you’d hop in the hot tub or dance the night away. It’s an even shittier feeling knowing that you are the only one who notices or cares about your armpit bulge and squishiness — and that you are the only one holding you back from doing the quick-feet, shuffle-around happy dance in your heart.

I have since thrown away the Miley Cyrus bikini from Walmart. I finally got one from a retailer that doesn’t have questionable labor practices and from a brand that isn’t named after someone I used to watch on the Disney Channel. Because whether it’s a hot tub or the Pacific Ocean or the Minnesota lakes, I’m not staying away. I have to get in the water and back on the dance floor. These are the places where life happens — real, squishy, sometimes-shitty life. And I hope I stay in the water until my toes prune. I hope I stay on the dance floor until my feet blister.

I hope you go to those places too, and I hope you stay.

arrows.

When I was 24, I got two tattoos: a list of latitude and longitude coordinates on my right shoulder blade and an arrow on my right arm. It’s always easy to explain the first one; they are tangible numbers that translate into a spot on a map, tied to time periods in my life when I called that place home. I like answering questions about that one — it’s concrete, specific, and makes sense even to people who don’t like or understand tattoos. There’s not much wondering or meaning-making you have to do to get its purpose on my body.

The arrow though? That one’s always hard to explain, and my answer changes every time someone asks about it. Sometimes I got it because you have to pull an arrow back before letting it go. Sometimes I got it because I heard that Kasey Musgraves song where she told us to follow our arrows, and I thought it was cheesy but in a good, true way.

But if you asked me right now I would say I have this tattoo as a reminder. (Aren’t they all?) I want to remember (and believe) that I can point myself in a direction and go. Not just point myself to new places to travel or to new jobs or new hobbies; those tangible things that show up in our calendars or our camera rolls or, sometimes, on our bodies as tattoos. I want to remind myself that I can bravely move toward the indefinable things that make up the parts of each day — the relationships and vocations and goals and the things I journal about, the hopes I whisper to my closest circle, the swirly truths I know but can’t always say.

I want to remind myself that when I want or need or deeply feel something, I can thrust myself fully toward that hard, wild, brave thing. And that I can trust that I will land where I need to.

Ask me tomorrow, maybe it’ll be different. For now, my tattoo is like me in this picture: looking ahead, courage coming breath by breath.