It's been so long

It's been so long since I used writing to work through what was going on in my head. There are a few reasons for that, not least of which is fear. I was ready to wrap this part of me in a shroud, let it die quietly somewhere unseen and gone forever. I wasn't ready. I was desperate. You see, I'm afraid that all of the strides and positive steps I have taken would be undone by honesty. Honesty that I'm not doing great. That I'm never really doing great. There are parts of my life, of my day-to-day that are great, but overall, I always struggle. I might always struggle.

When my life looks right, so many people who love me breathe a sigh of relief. Thank god that's over. She's herself again. We can all get back to normal life. So, for their sake, I want my life to look right. Sadly, it looking right on the outside and it feeling wrong in the inside is a pretty narrow tightrope I walk and no one but me even knows I need a safety net, much less that I can't see one.

The irony is that it was honesty that provided so much healing in the first place, back then. So, I thought I'd try it on again, like an old dress that used to make me feel glamorous. It doesn't fit the same, just like my dresses. They're still them, but I'm not me. Honesty is strength, but I am weak.

In some ways, rock bottom was easy. When you have nothing left to lose, why not bare it all? It felt good and empowering. Though I'm sure it would offer the same sense of strength, now there is so much to lose....credibility, reputation, friendships, the comfort of those who no longer feel they have to worry for me.

But I feel the panic rising up in me again. It's been building recently. It's loss and gain. As losses trigger sadness and that desperation to protect, gain triggers that sense of something to lose,  and I feel a shadow creeping along behind me, ready to overtake me. It's fear of the unknown, which for so long felt like adventure when things were better. Maybe I'm simply destined to live in the in between, not quite good, not terrible. Maybe I publish this but tell no one, walking that line....not full exposure, but not quite hiding. Maybe.

What happens when...

You even out.  When normal is normal for longer than what was once normal, you start feel normal.  And in feeling normal, you are able to look back and sift through the experiences, big and small.

Like after the tide has retreated, each grain of sand becomes an individual piece of the larger, beautiful expanse of beach that stretches out so far, but no longer seems too far.  I can see the moments, the hurts, the incidents, the reactions and the beach goes on as far as the eye can see.

So, now, I start sifting.  I've evened out.

"New Year, New You"

So, they say....  Rather, I'd like to find authentic me.  That's not yoga speak, I promise.  It's not a deep, spiritual(-appearing) venture.  I want to strip away all the stuff, the expectations, the effort, the impressions and just figure out who the hell I am.  Right now, I'm the girl who struggles to complete stupid online personality tests because I truly don't know if I'm tea or coffee...

Truth is, I'm probably both.  I've always been an imbalance of extremes.  Woods or grids, silent or loud, all or nothing.  Maybe that IS me, that indefinable who knows what.

#bitch

I have been in the midst of the most fascinating transformation...  

I've decided to stop being a pushover.  That statement requires a bit of explanation.  I am not a victim.  I never have been, even when I have been, objectively speaking, victimized.  Rather, my flaw is that I am a pleaser and a fixer, and a tad too trusting.  I want others to be happy and, somewhere along the way, I took that desire on as a responsibility.  

Where has being overly accommodating ever gotten me?  And no, it's not all about what I can get, but it sure is about what I've chosen to give up.  I'm redefining what is important to me and I'm sort of high on the list.  

So am I going to become a #bitch?  Ha ha, I doubt it.  Rather, I'll need to start creating new expectations for myself.  Today, I stood up for something that didn't make sense to me (and believe me, it was outside my comfort zone to do so).  I was perfectly polite, had a positive interaction, and ultimately the outcome was favorable to me, but the entire time I was in the middle of it, I felt like a bitch.  I felt like "that lady" who requires accommodation for every whim.  Really, my request was pretty reasonable and it was granted and the outcome is better, but I felt bad for asking.  

That will need to get better.  

How?

How do you forgive yourself for all the things you've done?  How can you forgive when you know there is no forgiveness?  

How do you turn off the fear?  The panic that you haven't done enough...the fear you have of not making it long enough to undo all the harm.  

How can you fail time after time after time without wondering when it will end?

How do you let time pass when nothing ever changes?

How can you find quiet when there is always so much noise?

How do you be everything that everyone deserves when you can't find all your pieces?

How can you move when your heart, your soul is lead?

How?  

The Shadow

Sometimes that dark thing, that shadow, rises up in me.  Sometimes it is swift, obvious, and debilitating.  Sometimes it creeps, slowly taking over every rational thought, each ray of light, all hope.

I keep thinking that, as circumstances change, things will change.  I will change.  Somehow, I always forget that I am always me deep down.  Suddenly, I have more time than ever to do the things I love and explore things I think I'd like.  Instead of contentment, I feel guilt.  I have a...I'm at a loss at what to call it because it doesn't feel like what it should...a business?  Career?  Calling, perhaps?  Yet, I still feel like a failure of a partner to my husband, a bad example of a human to my children, and a fraud to the rest of the world that has known me.  I have these big ideas that burst into my consciousness only to find that I am incapable of follow through.  I want so badly to create something, to inspire, but the impulse flickers on and off like a light in a storm.

I can't seem to do small, so everything in my mind is huge.  Failures.  Obligations.  Disappointment.  Regret.  FEAR.  Sadness.  Deep, deep discontent.  A desperate desire to find a quiet place for my mind and my self-criticisms to rest.

Every night I go to sleep with ghosts.  Every morning I wake with the best intentions, only to find that dark days follow dark dreams.  I sit, glassy eyed, wishing I could do one of the thousand things I feel like I should do, trying to remember what it is I like to do.  I go outside and feel the sunshine and breeze on my face and feel alive for just a moment and then the sensation fades, so I go back into hiding.

What I know now that I didn't know then is that there is a deep, burning inside me that is stronger than the darkness that surrounds it.  Honestly, it's almost harder this way than it was when I felt truly hopeless.  I recognize what is lost and what there is to lose.  Instead of being overwhelmed with it all at once, my heart feels each individual ache.  It's excruciating, paralyzing, but not numbing.  Not this time.  Not yet.

Progress

Progress is a fickle thing.  With each arduous step forward, I find myself slipping backward.  I thought to compare myself to Sisyphus, tasked with apparent forward progress just to watch his efforts slide back down the hill and have to start again and again.  But Sisyphus was cunning and unapologetic.  He was prideful.  I am not.

In fact, with all the progress I display, whether it's casual optimism like, "Yeah, things are going great," or simply silently suffering through my fear and feelings of worthlessness, there is no better.  There is no ending.  Perhaps there is no progress at all.

I know I am approaching danger when I start to hide, figuratively speaking.  I stopped writing in September.  I moved away from the more raw, honest work to a half-optimistic, half-bullshit attempt at hope, at "healed."  The truth, of course, is that although it can get better for a time, it can also get worse for a time.  It is a constant internal struggle between accepting me as I am and striving to be better than I am.

It is a constant effort to navigate my life at an even keel, cautiously optimistic about any "progress" yet fully expecting the storms.  And the storms come.  I got to a strong place where I weathered the storms on the deck, sails and steering managed, knowing that if I wanted better, I had to go after it.  I had to fight.  Though I make it though each storm now, I find myself retreating below deck, pulling the covers over my head, hiding, hoping it will pass.  I spend much of my time in a room with curtains because I'm anxious again of what is "out there."  I'm not terrified, I can leave the house, but I'm glad I can see out and no one can see in.  It's progress, I suppose, but I still take steps back.  Frequently.

I am fearful again of sharing where I am at.  What once felt so therapeutic, so honest and freeing, seems risky.  I have something to lose again because, though I struggle, I have come so far.  I have new people in my life who know nothing of my spectacular fall from someplace better.  I am doing everything that I can to move in a direction of peace and love.  Acknowledging the darkness that sits so uncomfortably inside me makes me feel like a fraud.  How can the two exist together?  They do.  Perhaps that is the nature of my affliction and why I can't find balance.  Perhaps that's why there will always be a hidden, internal conflict, and progress will always be a struggle between will and nature.

But, as a wise friend shared with me, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."  -Maya Angelou  So, I will tell me story again.