Help, I Have Done it Again

I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there’s no-one else to blame

~Sia: Breathe Me*

Last fall, I was feeling pretty good. I had been mending my way through some pretty big sadness, but I was starting to feel hopeful again and my voice was getting stronger and my energy felt better than it had in months. There were times when the solitude of lockdown was kind of exhilarating and a lot of that had to do with energy. I wasn’t having to monitor so carefully what I was spending in energy and it was kind of luxurious.

Then an opportunity came up. It offered a chance to make some money that would feed my passion for travel and allow me to do some work on my house. Everything seemed to make sense and lots of things fit. Why wouldn’t I do it? I was feeling a little worried about Covid Isolation during the darkest days of winter, and I wouldn’t be going anywhere much during the very short cold days. I had time. I felt I was being responsible. But there was a catch. A nearly imperceptible pause that I put aside. And then I mocked a fortune cookie that said, “As long as you don’t sign up for anything new, you’ll do fine.” Smartass fortune cookie. I know, I know it was a fortune cookie, but damn if it didn’t have something real to say.

So, I dove into this new work and immediately it felt hard. It didn’t really make sense because it should have been second nature in a lot of ways. It was taking me a lot of time, though, and I often felt confused and overwhelmed. I told myself, “You just have to get acclimated. Just because you’re not good at something right away doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. This is a great opportunity, so buck up baby!” If I know anything, I know bulldozing—head down and get shit done. Again, I didn’t listen to my inner wisdom. And then, the most unexpected and stressful time I can remember at my regular job collided with my extra job, and I went into crisis mode. I had to keep my commitments and I couldn’t let people down—those are my values—but it wouldn’t be without a cost.

I gained weight, I was losing a lot of hair and I felt anxious and really sad. How did I let myself do this when I had gotten to such a good place? What did I miss? How did I make such a big mistake? The truth is, I could have chosen differently but it all may have been made of purpose. As is often the case when we don’t pay attention to intuition in its subtle form, it has no choice but to get louder. In this case, it knocked me over and broke me open to some really deep reflection about what my limits are and what deeply wounded places in me still needed to be healed. Yes, I must admit, there were gifts.

This is what I may be finally internalizing. My time and my energy are among my most valuable resources. They belong to me and I don’t have to give them away to prove my value, especially to a system that has no boundaries. I was doing a lot of work on my time for Job A in addition to trying to do something for myself by taking on Job B. The system will push up against your boundaries to see what it can get from you and do it all under the guise of an altruistic end. But there is no altruistic end if you are significantly damaged by the means. 

Next, my energy is different from a majority of the population. Introversion and sensitivity are not conditions or flaws, they are innate qualities that bring many gifts to the world as well as an energy that is distinctly not boundless and that must be carefully balanced and restored. I’m not suggesting that absolutely everyone is not vulnerable to exhaustion. I know, though, from a lifetime of having to explain and defend my need to pull in, to recover and restore energy after spending it out in the world that everyone doesn’t reach this point as the same rate. I have a pretty specific capacity for activity and interaction and when I spend energy in one place, it has to be replenished before I can spend again. If I work extra here, it’s gotta come out of something else there. Living on energy credit leads to bankruptcy rather quickly.

Moving forward, if I don’t want to get stuck in this cycle, I have to make choices that fairly compensate me and make my soul sing. That’s it. Not because I can make them align with other things, not because I can connect the dots of meaning, not because it’s a really great opportunity—not if it’s not right for me and not if the messengers in my body tell me differently. And that’s not to say that making these choices is easy. Intuition can be a fine thread that runs through some big bold conditioning that contradicts it and that we’ve been very good students of.

I’ve done crisis. I’ve sat with the dying on many occasions. I’ve pulled up to the gas pump needing fuel to get to work not being sure if there was even enough money in the bank to pay for it. When life delivers crisis, you get very focused and do what has to be done. Boundary-less systems and other people’s agendas are not my crisis. I will not live with a crisis mentality in manufactured chaos, for life surely has more shit that I can not control to hand me. When the crisis is real, I will rise.

So, this is what I’m doing to heal. I’m finishing what I’ve started before taking on anything new. I’m reeling in the glimmers of excitement that are beginning to present themselves again. I’m reevaluating my values and my needs–mind body and spirit–to determine where boundaries must be strengthened —some of them with myself. I’m acknowledging that sitting with my discomfort (like loneliness in the isolation of a socially distanced winter) may well be far less painful than not attending to those things most essential to my well-being. I’m swimming slow laps, healing old wounds so that I’ll be less likely to open up new ones, writing in my journal, practicing mindfulness, talking to and snuggling with the doggies, sitting in the yard with the chickens, and going for lots of walks in the woods.

I’m learning to metabolize emotions to make room for new fully conscious choices. Above all else, I’m reminding myself that growth and healing are not a destination but a cycle of experimenting and learning and trying again, and progress is sometimes incremental. I’m remembering that and the fact that we’re surviving a freaking pandemic! Grace, dear Kim. And you know what? I find myself lying down at night to realize that I haven’t felt anxious, and I am sometimes overwhelmed with gratitude for having faced the challenge and come out smarter. In those moments, I have to the thank the Universe out loud for this amazing opportunity to grow.

*As an aside, if you haven’t seen the last 3.5 minutes of the Six Feet Under series, it might be one of the best things ever made for TV.