I quit my corporate day job two weeks ago. The last thread of over a year of nearly constant stress, overwork, and hypervigilance, severed.
At the beginning of this year, change felt impossible. Misery and self-betrayal had become too familiar. I was having daily recurring anxiety attacks, locked in survival mode, trying to keep my life together while struggling to process the loss of a relationship I thought was unconditional, but proved just as fragile and messed up as everything else. My identity and self-esteem became unmoored in the wake of that loss. It had been my last shred of safety after leaving fundamentalist Christianity and searching for meaning again after all my coping mechanisms born of unprocessed trauma began to fail.
I write this from a sunny corner of a verdant 1950’s house in a bike-friendly area of my home city, which I now share with my partner, and my precious pets. This is a bewildering new season, something that always felt out of reach. I wish I felt pure relief and joy at the possibilities, but finally given the space to heal, my body hurts as it slowly begins to exhale.
As the feeling comes back, with relief comes the pain I couldn’t process, that I bottled up and pushed away. There are moments of quiet, but I often find myself wading through a volatile fog of shame, exhaustion, activation, self-criticism, frustration, and a deep terror of abandonment. I’m still having anxiety attacks. My body can’t handle stress, and flashes to rage and shutdown on a hair trigger.
I’m still struggling to repair my ability to trust others, a sickly clipping of my old young-adult-adventure-novel-esque confidence and hope, sullen among decorative pots of the green and thriving projects I somehow nurtured from the darkness.
I haven’t felt able to allow myself patience, rest, and tenderness in a very long time. I doing my best to trust the healing process, improving a little each day. With creativity, courage, and a lot of therapy, I hope I can build something new.
Odonata 