*sigh*
I have a great job. I'm living in a city where many people would give their left arm to live. I have healthy, happy, thriving children (who are moving on with their own lives, HOW DARE THEY??) I'm healthy. I have a roof over my head and a car that gets me from A to B daily. I have the best siblings ever and friends who love me and have my back ferociously.
I feel lost. I feel like I'm swimming in quicksand.
Everything external points towards living the dream and please don't get me wrong; I'm beyond grateful for everything mentioned in paragraph one. When the external is solid there is only one other place to look for why the lost feeling exists. It's clearly internal.
I've been busy for the past 23 years. Busy with babies and chaos and teenagers and groceries and cooking and bill paying and career building. Suddenly I'm not busy and the lack of distraction is deafening. All the things I've defined myself with for so, so long are no longer tugging at me.
What. The. Fuck?
It happened in the blink of an eye which is, I suppose, part of why I'm standing here looking around thinking "What the hell just happened?" I always assumed this would be a gradual process and that I would be allowed to ease into it bit by bit, like walking into a cold lake on a hot summer day. That's not how it went. I was catapulted into the lake from the shore and holy-jesus-it's-cold-in-here.
It's tempting to just find ways to make myself busy again, to gather distraction the way I used to gather loads and loads of never ending laundry. But that would be a band aid and inevitably band aids fall off, leaving the unresolved issue still very much alive and well.
I want to be 4 again and have my Mom kiss it better. Pretty sure that's not an option.
So. Time to put on my big girl panties, roll up my sleeves and dig in. The seeds of that recognition have already been planted and are starting to grow. A little. I think.
Step 1: own my shit. This has been humbling, painful and liberating. I don't like it, really....but I like the weight that is lifted because of it. I have been such an asshole in many ways and I want to do better.
Step 2: listening to my intuition. It's powerful. Shockingly powerful. I have been burying it for so long in the name of survival, or what I thought was what I needed to survive that I almost forgot it existed. It feels good to embrace it again.
Step 3: trust. Oy. Trusting people has not been my strong suit and (big recognition) when you don't trust people, you inadvertently create situations where the impending betrayal that you fear becomes a reality. Trusting requires being vulnerable which is terrifying. Here's the kicker - if I trust myself, truly trust that I will be ok no matter what happens, suddenly there is no need to control anything external. Suddenly I am free to let everything unfold and for people around me to have their own experiences, knowing that I will be ok. Always. So, I'm working on all of it but I'm impatient. I want it to happen quicker.
As the meme says:
I have a great job. I'm living in a city where many people would give their left arm to live. I have healthy, happy, thriving children (who are moving on with their own lives, HOW DARE THEY??) I'm healthy. I have a roof over my head and a car that gets me from A to B daily. I have the best siblings ever and friends who love me and have my back ferociously.
I feel lost. I feel like I'm swimming in quicksand.
Everything external points towards living the dream and please don't get me wrong; I'm beyond grateful for everything mentioned in paragraph one. When the external is solid there is only one other place to look for why the lost feeling exists. It's clearly internal.
I've been busy for the past 23 years. Busy with babies and chaos and teenagers and groceries and cooking and bill paying and career building. Suddenly I'm not busy and the lack of distraction is deafening. All the things I've defined myself with for so, so long are no longer tugging at me.
What. The. Fuck?
It happened in the blink of an eye which is, I suppose, part of why I'm standing here looking around thinking "What the hell just happened?" I always assumed this would be a gradual process and that I would be allowed to ease into it bit by bit, like walking into a cold lake on a hot summer day. That's not how it went. I was catapulted into the lake from the shore and holy-jesus-it's-cold-in-here.
It's tempting to just find ways to make myself busy again, to gather distraction the way I used to gather loads and loads of never ending laundry. But that would be a band aid and inevitably band aids fall off, leaving the unresolved issue still very much alive and well.
I want to be 4 again and have my Mom kiss it better. Pretty sure that's not an option.
So. Time to put on my big girl panties, roll up my sleeves and dig in. The seeds of that recognition have already been planted and are starting to grow. A little. I think.
Step 1: own my shit. This has been humbling, painful and liberating. I don't like it, really....but I like the weight that is lifted because of it. I have been such an asshole in many ways and I want to do better.
Step 2: listening to my intuition. It's powerful. Shockingly powerful. I have been burying it for so long in the name of survival, or what I thought was what I needed to survive that I almost forgot it existed. It feels good to embrace it again.
Step 3: trust. Oy. Trusting people has not been my strong suit and (big recognition) when you don't trust people, you inadvertently create situations where the impending betrayal that you fear becomes a reality. Trusting requires being vulnerable which is terrifying. Here's the kicker - if I trust myself, truly trust that I will be ok no matter what happens, suddenly there is no need to control anything external. Suddenly I am free to let everything unfold and for people around me to have their own experiences, knowing that I will be ok. Always. So, I'm working on all of it but I'm impatient. I want it to happen quicker.
As the meme says:
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