With all of this free time that I have suddenly found and all of the outer forces pressing in on me with such unrelenting pressure, I am left with few options of how to spend my days. I usually start off with waking up and feeling this strange sense of urgency to begin, but I have no plans and nowhere to be. I get out of bed, straighten up, get dressed, and feed myself. Sometimes I'll meditate, spend some time focusing on my breath and the stillness of my mind. Sometimes I'll get my yoga mat out and find that mind-body connection through movement and breath. Other times, I will paint, listen to podcasts, read, or journal. No matter which activity I choose, when I chose it, or how it makes me feel, I don't ever feel like it is enough.
During periods of high anxiety or stress in my life, I have always found comfort and safety in doing. Filling my time with this and that, moving at one million miles per hour, too busy to sit still and feel the electric buzz that fuels my manic movements. Perhaps it is how I burn off energy when there is too much inside my body, or maybe it is a way to distract myself from dealing with the root of my anxiety. This kind of intense movement and doing has a tendency to fuel my nervous system as it over-functions. I have been surviving through periods of stress and anxious tension by burning myself out until I have nothing left to give. Until my body falls limp and my mind breaks. This is not the time to do this. In fact, I believe this might be the time to finally face the way my body buzzes and the way my mind melts when life is just too much for one moment. Perhaps it is time for me to learn how to stop over-functioning and focusing on doing, and learn how to simply be. But to simply be means to sit with all that my over-functioning has covered up and kept me from feeling.
This is only just the beginning of my climb. Deciding that the idea of being present with my mind and emotions might be healthier, more calming, and more supportive for me than doing all I can to avoid, is just the first step. Noticing what needs to change is the point at which you climb from. The mountain is now in front of you, big and bold. You see your path upward to the peak, now its time to start the climbing and hiking. Upward you go! This climb for me is all about exposing and facing the things about myself that have fueled my manic need to do and burn. The climb is the part where I sit still, for once in my life, and brace myself for the flood of all that has been trying to be seen and felt, trying to flow out, leaving me with the truth of how I feel about myself.
How I feel about myself. That is the dark night that falls upon me hastily as I make my way to the top of this mountain. It's funny. In all of the running around that I do, all of the unnecessary worrying, planning, rearranging, cleaning, and achieving, I have never had to actually sit still, with just my thoughts about myself and what I feel and think about myself. There has always been something, someone, someplace that needed me. That needed my over-functioning capabilities. There has always been something, someone, or someplace that I put before myself. That I choose to put my energy into before I put that energy into a much-needed conversation with myself.
The first few weeks of this isolation have taught me how to take care of myself first because my health depends on it. Because I am the only one that is responsible for my life and the only one who can care for myself. If I don't change the way my energy flows and redirect most of it back into myself and my own care, I will surely suffer because of it. That part was easy. It was almost instinctual! The hard part is proving to be facing my own relationship with myself and not just the relationship I believe I should have, or the relationship I am trying to achieve. It is time for me to see the real ways that I have learned how to treat myself, how to talk to myself, how to have expectations for myself. It is all about everything I have held as true up until this point and all of the ways those beliefs have affected the habits I have formed and the ways that I view myself. That is the vertical climb. That is the foot that slips and the rocks that tumble down to the ground as you watch with fear. There is no turning back, what has been discovered cannot be unseen or ignored. The only way out is through. Through the perfectionism, through the meltdowns, through the exhaustion and restlessness. Through the moments where I look in the mirror and see someone who is never enough. Someone who fails at everything she does, someone who pleases others at the expense of herself, who can please everyone but herself.
I have to hike through that dark and forbidden forest of disappointment in self because it exists between me and the top of my mountain. Those trees of doubt and insecurity were planted a very long time ago and I must see them all to know that it is not where I wish to remain. I must hike through the forest of desolation if I want to keep going. It is the only thing that separates me from the most beautiful view of the world and of life. I owe it to myself to keep on hiking and climbing, even through the hardships that will arise, unexpected and sour as they may be. I have already committed to this mountain and to this journey because ironically, I know that I am worth it. I know that I don't wish to feel this way about myself any longer and the conditioning must be undone. I must be unraveled and unwoven if I want to reweave my relationship with myself. This is my journey. This is me.
