Think Think Think
April25
This week has been difficult for me for some reason. I can’t even put a finger on or point to what it could be, but I’ve had some “low†days and they’ve been sort of kicking my ass. I had such an incredible weekend…I told myself when my Monday began horribly (or more like horror-ably) that I was just coming down from so much good times. Sort of a fun hangover, but that was not the case. I wasn’t just exhausted, I was feeling lousy. Emotionally, I’m a wreck once more and after my long reprieve from such thoughts and ways of thinking (two weeks of calmness and peace thanks to that Alan Watts series on YouTube “Eastern Wisdomâ€), it was jarring to be feeling insecure and vulnerable again.
As I write this (yesterday), I am feeling a great lack in my own self. It is my 14th anniversary with B (8 years married, still technically married after all) and I don’t know how I feel about anything. I just feel sad and raw and bitter. Last night I had this incredible urge to be angry with someone, but no reason to be. Very frustrating…Why the hell would I want to be angry with someone, just on a whim? Strange!
Vulnerability, it’s such a struggle. We’re told or taught to conceal this part of ourselves; to put our “best foot†or face “forward†and appear to always have your shit together. Have I ever claimed to have my shit together? I seriously doubt it…quite the opposite, if anything. I am uncomfortable in my own vulnerability. I often carry it with me like some dark secret. I find myself resenting it, but that does nothing for me. It’s difficult because I don’t know how to handle it and don’t want to bring others down. I don’t know what caused this latest bout of it and I don’t know how anyone can help me out of it. That is the real bitch of it. I want to just tell someone, “Hey! Make me feel good again!†but what could they do? My friends are awesome and supportive, but all anyone can offer is love and kind words. I need the love, don’t get me wrong, but when I’m like this I have a hard time accepting it and even when I do it’s only superficially. And then I just feel like an asshole. Their kind words only make me cry more or feel worse for not honoring what it is that they see in me.
I put up signs in my room and bathroom with positive messages; to remind myself, to inspire me and hopefully to allow myself to start my day off right. Today when I saw the sign on my bedroom door, “Never forget: You are a Sexy Bitch!†(Trust me, it’s a cute-ass sign and usually makes me smile if nothing else) all I could manage was a quiet groan. It was truly a day where I wish I’d stayed under the covers.
I have so much to be grateful and thankful for and it is because of this that feeling like I do today/this week makes me feel like the biggest asshole and the shittiest friend. I know I need to give myself time to process this stuff, but it just feels like bullshit or an excuse. Why is this week different from the last? I’m still me. I’m still living my life as I want to do so. Why do I feel so low? It makes me feel sick. Maybe I’m just sick of myself. I spent so much time trying to keep my mind open and free and clear and it worked so well that when any thoughts came back in, any of my old way of thinking/being that it sent me straight to Bummersville. Do not want! I was so happy this past weekend. I was calm and mellow and just chill and awesome. I’m not even sore from that amazing hip hop dance class…
And there is it! I’ve just realized that it’s a worthiness thing. Damn! I know what I want and what I deserve. I know I’m awesome and a bad ass. I do, it’s okay. So where does this worthiness shit come from all of a sudden? Well, I kind of know that, too. I’ve not been entirely able to let go of the guilt. The guilt from growing up catholic. The guilt of moving out early and leaving my siblings behind. The guilt of having a terrible family situation in general. Guilt for moving out to find happiness within myself and on my own. Guilt for not having found that yet. Guilt for pushing people away and only letting very selected people into my life right now. Guilt is such a stupid emotion and burden to carry. It does no one any good.
The truth is I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I don’t think I ever do. And when I believe that I do? That’s when I’m really in trouble, folks. I live my life by the seat of my pants. It’s all I have ever known. I take risks, I get hurt, I hurt myself a lot and I live to fight another day. I guess today is just a day I don’t have the fight in me. Or at least I can’t find it. Maybe I don’t want to find it. Maybe I feel guilty for having so much fun and relaxing and everything over the weekend and so I don’t feel that I should keep feeling good or something. I don’t know! I just know that how I’m feeling is very odd. I feel awkward five thousand. I feel disconnected from myself somehow. I actually heard myself say, “Yeah, I guess my dreams have just gotten smaller” today. *HeadDesk* Wow! That is so not me! I’m the dreamer of dreams and the thinger of things!
So here I am all caught up in my own existential bullshit and questioning my worthiness of it all. If I am not connected with myself and I am just going through the motions, as it were, then how can I learn or grow? This is what I want from life. To learn and to grow and to keep on keepin’ on. Seems I have the latter going for me. I think a big part of it is also that I have had something crystallize in my mind and I’m finally ready to confront and address it, only doing so leaves me not knowing what the outcome could be. I hate not knowing stuff! Ugh! I weigh what could happen, what will most likely happen, what the worst could happen might be and I can’t get beyond the thinking parts. I think and think and think…
And there is the problem. When I found the space between merely having thoughts and actively thinking is when I was calm. It was when I could just be me and be happy. It was when two words put together could leave me floating on air for five days straight without a care in the world! And I need remind myself that I can get there again if I did it before. Every state of being is temporary…everything is temporary! I can look back and see how far I have come and all it has taken me to get wherever it is that I am now. I can see the healed wounds and the ones still healing or needing to be. I can see the scared little girl inside of myself and want to hold her and tell her it will be okay again, soon. Sometimes, I guess, I just wish I had someone who could see that in me and do that for me, too. In some ways I do. I think I hide too much of that part of me from the world. Even typing that sentence was difficult for me. Even admitting that I was ever a little girl is hard for me. I fought so hard to grow up and be an adult (too young, too) and here I am nearly 35 and what is so different?
I often resent how I have had to work and fight and struggle my entire life. I wonder what my life would have been had I not had to do so. But then I see how different people are when they haven’t had those experiences in their own lives and I just cannot relate. I wonder how someone could truly love someone if they never had to fight for them or for anything. I guess that says more about me than them. The fact that I want in a partner or friend, or anyone in my life, the willingness to fight for me. And I have to wonder who would. I know many would say they would, but to actually fight for me? I wonder why this matters to me but I know why…it’s because no one has ever had to fight for me. I’ve always done that myself or fought for others or just to be with someone. Damn.
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This post was inspired by This Incredible Post and shared with me by my friend Margarita. I was particularly struck by the following:
“I wasn’t born “fierceâ€. It took me a long, long time to get to where I am now, and fuck it, sometimes I backslide. And I have to admit that, and own it, and hold in my heart a place for that girl who was abused, who was shamed, who is a survivor that still needs nurturing and reassurance sometimes.”
And I must admit that it truly struck a chord with me. I’m sure for many of you, too. Please go read it if you can, it’s really a great post.
She also put into words what I have never been able to:
“I’d often been asked how to start loving yourself wholly, and I never really had a good answer other than “just startâ€. I have another answer now–I think that expressing vulnerability, getting past that shame that we have internalized, letting it be known that hey, I’m not there yet, or I was there and right now I’m not, is the first step, and the fifth step, and can really be any step you need to take along the never ending journey that is loving yourself.”
“I’d often been asked how to start loving yourself wholly, and I never really had a good answer other than “just startâ€. I have another answer now–I think that expressing vulnerability, getting past that shame that we have internalized, letting it be known that hey, I’m not there yet, or I was there and right now I’m not, is the first step, and the fifth step, and can really be any step you need to take along the never ending journey that is loving yourself.”
It’s 100% okay to feel this way sometimes. Life wears people down, especially fighters. And you have a take a long moment, or several, and rekindle the fire you have that made you able to fight for everything to begin with.
You may or may not ever be with someone who will do the fighting for you, or even to be with you. Many people are not used to struggling, some are incapable of it, and many more who are used to it won’t be as battle-hardened as yourself. It doesn’t mean you should or should not be with them based on that. The idea that someone can take all of this away from you, well Idk if it ever actually happens. But I’ve still got that inner fire. I’m still used to fighting for everything, and I really don’t expect my love to do it for me. It just never goes away, which is a good thing, that resilient spirit is useful, though it’s a damn hard thing to carry around all the time. Hence the low points. Recharge yourself girl. The world needs people like you, all of them it can get. It will get better, and even if it doesn’t soon, know that, after fighting for everything for so long, you are strong enough to handle anything. Chin up, always 😉
e burden: Thank you! You are the greatest and I hope you know that! <3