Emotional Wreckage

Where do I begin? I feel like that was the first line of my very first blog post. I guess the answer is not as important as the steps taken. I woke up today feeling sad. So desperately sad. My life is not what I ever imagined it would be. It is fundamentally dismantled and every attempt that I make to put it back together seems to be met with some level of resistance. Are my beliefs that unrealistic? Do I truly view life from a foggy lens that only I can comprehend? I don’t believe that to be true. I believe that my expectations are ones that fit the needs of myself and my children and that makes them as real as anything else.

I am seeking to numb. I am seeking to stop feeling anything anymore. What does one do when they don’t have the use of unhealthy coping mechanisms to fall back on? Do you just develop healthy numbing behaviors, or do you sit in the discomfort? Currently, I am sitting in the discomfort. My feelings are BIG. They are so big that I don’t even know what to do with them. I don’t know whether to scream or cry or just fucking stay silent because silence at least protects me from backlash. But I will take the backlash rather than continue to abandon myself. I want to experience the pain. I want to experience the sadness because at the end of the day that is all that I have that is mine.

I feel like I have nothing that is mine currently. And I suppose that, that is something that I can look at from two narratives, one where I can build whatever I want or one where I can lament all I have lost. I am desperately seeking normalcy. I want normal to cover me in its warmth and make me feel like life isn’t as devastating as it has been lately. I want to feel like I am not slowly dying because I am being deprived of my basic human need for normal. So then, why am I not living? I suppose that isn’t as simple to answer as I would like but what I will say is that I am taking breaths everyday just like every other human on the planet and that is all that I can ask of myself.

Grief is not linear. It is a clusterfuck of emotions that surface whenever the fuck they want. They come and go just like everything else in life but when they linger it’s as if nothing else matters. You grieve your loss, you process the pain, and you hope that at any moment all the pain will just disappear. What I am realizing is that is pure fantasy and completely impossible and so I just sit with my shit and hope for the best, passive I suppose but accurate. I read all I can to find answers on how to process, how to embrace the pain and use it for growth but in reality, all I want is to be loved and to be met where I am rather than having to work so hard to be accepted, even in my recovery. Listen, I am far from perfect, in fact I am a hot fucking mess of a woman who is simply trying to be her absolute best. And right now, my absolute best is not knowing what each day is going to look like but longing for the day that I feel something good again.

If I take life by the balls, I suppose I can do anything that I want and that is what I am leaning towards today because I am tired of feeling like I just can’t seem to meet the expectations of those around me. I just can’t seem to say the right thing, do the right thing, choose the right person, nothing seems to line up just right. So, all I can do is move forward. What that actually will entail, I do not know but what it won’t entail is compromising my beliefs. I know that I have spent a large portion of my life entitled, goal oriented, focused on status, and recognition. Now, I am seeking, actually I am desperately longing for love. Healthy love that is built on a foundation of best intentions. Wanting something doesn’t mean I am unwilling to work to get it. Wanting something is the birth of an idea and asking for that idea to come to life means that I am committed to it. But what happens when that ask is an impossible task for someone else? What do you do then? I suppose you give up and walk away. That perhaps is the easiest thing to do. Cut your losses and walk away. I’ve never walked away from a thing in my life. At times, unhealthy things have kept me tethered because I have always found the good. The one reason I needed to continue along that path. Call it codependence or whatever other label you want to put on it, but I don’t walk away especially when it is someone I love and care for. My children, my family, all deserve that I stay in it with them no matter how hard it gets because outside of that I have nothing else.

I learned something very difficult this year. I learned that I spent a lifetime seeking love. I sought it out in drugs, alcohol, sex, in smoking. I sought it out in all things except for within myself. I had love inside me the whole time, I just didn’t know how to access it. Love is not performance driven. It is not based on a result. It is based on being as authentic with yourself as possible. Of being able to say to those around you, I am not perfect, and I am a mess, but I am still loveable. You can still have a healthy relationship with me even in my imperfection.

I am working on myself in ways that I never imagined possible. I am looking at myself in a new way that without the experiences of this last year I would not have been willing to do. I have acknowledged how unglued I was. How much pain I had been in a result of my life’s experiences, and I have made some choices that have left me wondering what kind of human I want to be at the end of this healing journey. I’ll be honest, I still don’t have the definitive answer to that question. I think that will come in time. So, all I have in me right now is to just keep taking forward movement. I have the room in my heart to love myself, my kids, my family, and those that are most important to me.

There is no rule book to this life. There is not an instruction manual that says that you need to do things this specific way or else. There is however room for acceptance and realizations that each of us carries our own burdens, our own pain, our own trauma and that no one other than ourselves is responsible for ensuring we are comfortable. The safety of our relationships is not dependent on what someone else does to make us feel safe but rather what we do to keep ourselves safe. Our relationships aren’t threatened by outside forces, our relationships are threatened by our own insecurities and ourselves. I am seeking normalcy. I am seeking that moment when I can rest and breathe easy. That moment may not come but I am sure as hell going to do everything in my power to seek it.

I can control my actions and behaviors and make decisions that fulfill my needs. You can call me selfish but if my needs are not being met then how am I expected to meet the needs of others? I can’t it hasn’t happened thus far. I continue to swirl around the drain trying to make something different happen with the same exact result. Perhaps it’s time to stop being a one trick pony and do something completely different. Maybe it is time I level up. If being left is one of my biggest fears, then perhaps it is time to stop abandoning myself. Perhaps the only person I can rely on is myself. I am the least likely person to leave myself when the going gets tough so perhaps that is where my focuses should lie. I have relied on outside sources for validation for far too long, time to reset that expectation and look inward towards myself. The more I look at me for the answers to my life’s difficult questions the less disappointment I must encounter. I can prove to myself that I am good, I am human, I am loving by loving myself. This thinking may result in physically being alone but at least I will have myself at night to wrap me in normalcy.

The truth is that when the sun settles and the dark takes over, the loneliness permeates. I can sooth myself long enough before I want to crawl out of my skin and the dark consumes me. I am not always able to recognize the beauty around me because of the sadness that grief possesses. So, all I can do is hang on tight for dear life because if I don’t, I don’t know what will come of me. If I don’t believe that tomorrow has the potential to bring upon the normalcy I so desperately seek, I may very well lose any humanity that I have left. I can't bury myself in work, and books, and TV and my kids forever to distract from the visceral pain that I am feeling. They don’t fix it; they simply numb it. Allow me to check in and out of reality as I please and that is a privilege I am unwilling to use. It’s time to sit firmly planted in the discomfort for as long as it takes to provide my own new normal. They say that time heals all wounds. We shall see.