The externalization of fear.
For the vast majority of my life, I have done everything as “perfectly” as I could imagine doing it. I went to class and focused on being a decent student and focused on being a decent employee. I got my homework in roughly on time and took the advanced courses. I didn’t go to parties or get into trouble. I got a job after I graduated and went to work and did my job well and got promoted a bunch of times and stayed where I was getting all the jobs. I tried to apply for other jobs, but nothing really ever worked out.
Then things started to shift. Around the time my ex decided to go a different direction in his life, my life had stopped being so perfect. Not that it ever was in the first place. But I started to find room for error, for mess ups, for me to create life instead of perfection. I’m a couple years out from starting to make more room for me, and I’ve learned so much about finding that space. And even though it is obviously the right path, to be not so perfect all the time, it still feels errant and fool hardy.
Some of this is because the current position of my life doesn’t feel like the height of my life - though in a lot of ways, I think it actually is. I’m sleeping in my sisters basement and collecting unemployment - but I’m also not working a job I actually detest. I’m also not accepting the wrong things for my life, even though the wrong things might make my life feel simpler somehow. I’m also not accepting that I’m the problem when it’s clear that there are other issues at work here. Maybe more importantly than anything else, I’m starting to internalize how difficult it is to find space for care and kindness for my self when I was raised in neglect disguised as self sufficiency and independence.
The hyper independence that I was raised in is a trauma response. Not simply my own trauma response, but whatever the people around me experienced to make them feel like this is normal, too. The idea that we should be alone and managing is not a well adjusted spirit, but it is one that I continue to reach back towards because being reliant on people betrays the way that I was raised. And even more complicated because it creates questions about the dreams that I have held to, clung to even, for most of my life. Traveling, seeing the world, owning my own home, finding my place in the world. I think these have been easy for people to support me in because they are normal dreams. But other people can dream normally. Other people know that if they buy a house and the plumbing is broken they can hire a plumber. I know that when I buy a house and the plumbing breaks I can learn how to plumb. It feels a lot like addiction - I’m addicted to being alone. And I don’t want to be anymore but the work is hard as hell and I’m tired, as always, of trying to mask all the work it takes for me to accept help, to accept that I’m not going to be able to do it all myself.
I don’t know what the solution is. I do know that I need to give myself the grace to find the solution. It feels sometimes like the work I am doing on myself is life or death. And I think, in some ways, that is probably the truth. It’s probably true that if I hadn’t started working on myself and addressing some of the issues when I did, I’d be dead of either toxic stress or suicide by this point. But in other ways, it’s not true that I need to be working this hard on every single thing. In fact, in some ways, it’s true that forcing myself to work so hard all the time is part of the same hyper-independence. That my flaws have to be resolved in order to be effective in my role in life. So I’m trying to slow down. I’m trying to accept that it makes sense that I want to run. That I’m allowed to still want to see the world and buy a home and have my own space without those dreams having to be connected to never having roots and never trusting anyone else to help me or be there when shit all goes wrong.
I thought when I started this that I’d be on the road a long time. I think I’m finding that the road is more metaphorical than what I imagined. The bravery I exude every day isn’t just tips like registering for STEP when you travel abroad or leaving a copy of an itinerary with a family member or leaving a post it note with your intended route on your steering wheel when you have nobody around but you’re still going for the hike. Those things are all brave and practical.
But inner work is brave and practical, too. And a hell of a lot scarier than what I think we expect it to be. Maybe we’re scared of bears eating us in the woods because if we were to be able to quiet that fear we might have to hear the fear inside of our own heads that suggest our life path is misdirected or we’re scared that we won’t tell all the people around us how much we love them. It’s easier to externalize fear than accept it. I know it’s easier for me to believe and trust that I have cancer and will die young than to try to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life. If I died, the problems might solve themselves (and this is NOT me telling you that I’m suicidal. This is not a call for help. This is honesty in a vulnerable shitty way that I hate but is true for me).
I’m scared. Internally. Externally. Perceptibly. I’m scared.
But I trust it’s going to be OK. Because, really, there isn’t anything else that I can do but trust it will be OK. And because I know that when I’m scared, I can keep working. I can take a break. I can take a hike. I can drive to a national park and see friends I haven’t seen in a long time but found out I was coming through MO and said “hell yes!” and I can find my way. Even if I’m scared. Maybe because I’m scared.