Dichotomy

Dichotomy. A division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different. I've been thinking a lot about that word.


Almost exactly 11 years ago – as in, by a few days – I moved to Bozeman, Montana, with my boyfriend at the time, so he could attend graduate school at Montana State University. We left the relative hustle-and-bustle of the greater Portland area to live in a state with a population density of 7.1 people per mile. It was a big adventure, and at the age of 20, I felt so very Adult with a capital A. Family and friends recommended preparing with essential items such as boots and multi-layer jackets, some advised I not go at all but stay home and finish my degree, but I was An Adult and I knew everything so I spent like $300 on a North Face fleece and an outer shell, quit my upwardly mobile job at a bank, and was like, “pssh, I got this, haters.” I was 20 years old, and I knew everything. Montana's just a little cold and that job is stupid, whatever.


Fast forward 1 week, on my first day of work in Montana. Waist-high snow had fallen overnight and I didn't buy any boots because I am An Adult who Makes Her Own Decisions, so I had to unpack the fake moon boots from my Napoleon Dynamite costume to dig out my car with a cardboard tube that a shipment from AllPosters came in. It was -10F with windchill and my nostrils and eyebrows froze and so did my bitter soul. My boss picked me up, and on our way to the main road we saw a fox. I was so steeped in awful I literally said, “Look at that stupid fox.”


More than 10 years later, I had the opportunity to move to Japan with my husband, into the Tokyo-area city of Sagamihara with a population density of 1363 people per mile. A lot more that 7.1 (that 0.1 lives in Granny Wilson's shed). Preparation was my full-time job for a solid 3 months leading up to the move. I had f*cking binders with tabs for every document I might need up to and including my 4^th grade report card (thanks Mrs. Shucka!), with multiple copies of each. I asked anyone who had lived abroad and had ever sneezed in my vicinity what they would recommend I do about the potential for anthrax being planted in my bag by a ne'er-do-well TSA agent. I refused to show up in Japan with moon boots and a cardboard tube.


Dichotomy.


At 20, I knew everything and that arrogance got me a thousand miles from where I wanted to be, literally and figuratively. At 25, I thought back to all the people who gave me advice when I was 20, and I sent each and every one of them a postcard that said “OMG you were totally right, sry, kthxbai” Then I turned 30. Then I started taking a mental stock in my head of all the people who are older than me and will certainly die imminently if 2016 is any indicator, and decided I needed to interview each of them and take notes on everything from how long to toast bread for a BLT, to the finer details of hiring a plumber.


Dichotomy. Oh what a difference 10+ years makes.


So why did I write this post? Let's be real, it's kind of a masturbatory journal entry, no? It is a little more altruistic and less vulgar than that, I promise.


65 years ago today, my paternal grandparents Bob and Ruthie got married. This year of 2016 they both passed away (seriously, f*ck you, 2016), leaving behind 7 children and an equal number of spouses, and 20 grandchildren. The picture of them on their wedding day makes me scoff in a very affectionate way, because they are a decade younger than I am now and so googly-eyed and ADORABLE but also oblivious and blind to the struggles that real life would thrust upon them. And I look at them and want to give them advice. ME! Give my late grandparents advice. They learned it all the hard way. Man, it must have really sucked going through life without 31 year old Tierney guiding their path. It's actually astonishing that they survived life before I was born in 1985 and achieved the gift of speech and thus advise-giving in roughly 1987. They were true pioneers.


Dichotomy.


Today – where are you? Are you happy? Will you look back on this year as the shit-end or the awesome-end of the dichotomy of your life? What will you do in 2017 to change or sustain? Are you listening to me, because I am 31 and I Know Everything? (you should, because I do)


A new year is upon us. Rock the shit out of it.