INTO THE WILD

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.

DECONSTRUCTION JOURNALS 12

I have begun to observe a certain behavior of mine.

When I was in college, tumblr.com was all the rage for young creative types, yet I refused to create an account for a long time because, “I would spend too much time on it.” I didn’t play video games either for this reason. I thought it made me self-possessed and mature.

The year I finally caved and started a Tumblr blog, I was already living with guilt and paranoia that God would ask me to give up art and writing because I loved it too much. I had been taught to see passions as idolatrous, in competition with God and therefore a selfish, short-sighted threat to my spiritual life.

Tumblr exposed me to many different viewpoints. Young people like me, doing what they loved and figuring themselves out together. Passively absorbing the stories of other peoples’ lived experiences created the first cracks that eventually led to my departure from Christian fundamentalism. Not to mention, seeing everyone’s art and writing brought me joy.

So I suppose in that regard, yes, Tumblr was dangerous. I did spend way too much time on it. But my online presence, my art as well as personal growth, improved dramatically because of it. I was enrolled in a challenging major at university, and still passed all my classes, as well as wrote the first draft of a 700-page novel.

Ten years later, I still find myself deliberately restricting access to things I know I will love, mostly in the form of media. Some part of me is afraid I will become obsessed with it. That it will take up too much room in my mind and the frustration and imposter syndrome will drive me to quit art and writing completely. That I will spend all my very scarce work time watching, reading, daydreaming.

It sounds strange, writing it out. This subtle pit in my stomach. This unspoken, unhinged method of restriction and control.

I’ve been putting self-care on my goals list each week, and manage it at least one day out of the seven. Sometimes it’s cooking myself dinner, writing for fun on projects I’m not officially working on at the moment, shutting down all to-do lists for a night. Last month, it was watching a show I had been keeping on my radar like a kid at the candy window. I was afraid I would love it, and I was correct. I binged it all in one night, stayed up long past my bedtime on a weeknight. I felt like I was nineteen again, watching cartoons online after a busy week. I’m still thinking about it quite a bit. I’ve already rewatched some of my favorite episodes.

The soundtrack is gorgeous. A fascinating blend of genres, surreal and emotional, heavily incorporating piano and organ, which, as a child of traditional church musicians, speaks to a deep place in me that I still love and hold sacred. Listening to the score at my day job carried my spirits through an extremely busy workweek. I still crashed hard at the end of it, expected of yet another marathon of overwork and sleep deprivation choosing thirteen-hour work days over giving up on my passions, but the next day I felt less hungover, overwhelmed, and depressed. I was able to be more present with my partner on our weekly Saturday outing. I’m more inspired than ever to work on my creative projects.

I’m reminded of other works of art over the last year that I let myself experience and love, the ways they have comforted me, bolstered my nerves, let me process emotions I struggled to access on my own, how they have influenced my current work in beautiful and exciting ways.

I have been slowly learning to incorporate enrichment in my daily life. Intuitive eating, bicycling, journaling, birdwatching, music…I often feel like I am forced to forget these things in favor of the survival mechanisms tearing away at me. I watch myself showing up less and less for things antithetical to my health and wholeness. I’m not only resentful of continuing to indulge these things, but I can’t manage to make myself align with them anymore, even for short periods of time.

I suddenly find myself at a crossroads. I would have liked to make some of the steepest changes on my horizon this year when I felt more secure financially, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that either I very soon take myself out of the game voluntarily, or my body will do it for me. Swiftly and unceremoniously.

I think I was able to keep it at bay for so long by pushing it behind this fear of change I developed over the last year. But I’m moving in with my partner soon, which has forced me to begin orienting toward a whole cascade of change. Each new notice submitted, logistics planned, ad posted, my control over my own misery slips more and more out of place.

I don’t know what the next few months will bring, but I’m trying really hard to land on my feet.

DECONSTRUCTION JOURNALS 11

After such a long time of fighting to stay here,

my spirit demands it’s time to leave.

I’ve spent years building my wings.

Big and colorful and earnest, they ache to spread, to test the wind, but I like them where they’re safe.

Even as it becomes more and more painful to keep them contained in dust-gathering familiarity.

I’m afraid to trust that they can hold me,

that my heart’s most indulgent daydreams could be worth letting spill into the lives and resources of other people.

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A/N: The illustration side of my body of work is starting to gain more traction, as my 9-5 job is actively destroying my health and entrepreneurship is beginning to look more and more possible. It’s scary!

DECONSTRUCTION JOURNALS 10: THE MESSY MIDDLE

My therapist quit last week.

I want to say I’ve been grappling with burnout for months, but I only notice it when I’m too far gone. A couple years is probably more accurate. I’m sick of feeling like I’m circling a drain.

I’ve been slowly starting to admit to myself what I truly want, cautiously listening to the signals my body’s screaming about quitting everything, lying face down on the floor, and waiting for my predatory corporate landlord to evict me. I’m learning how to give myself what I need, learning to allow my people to show up for me.

My therapy appointments were spotty, but beginning to help. I was carefully beginning to lean into opening my heart to this new season of my life after a such a long time spent in self-doubt and survival mode. The call I received from the office notifying me of my therapist’s departure just felt absurd.

“Hard to trust people when you keep being proven right,” my partner observed.

Getting myself up for work at 6 o’clock in the morning is an impossibility I somehow manage every day, but it always costs too much. The morning after I found out my therapist had quit, my partner got up early and made me coffee, then came and sat down on the edge of the bed to try to convince me to get up for “coffee and contemplation” with him before work. He knows it’s a healing ritual of mine I only get to do on weekends for lack of time and emotional resources.

My big, pudgy tuxedo cat joined the wakeup party, settling in against my side and purring like a motor. Swaddled grumpily in my blankets, I looked at the pair of them staring at me lovingly, my soft nana cat and my helpful golden retriever of a partner.

And I marvel that the last year of scarcity, anxiety attacks, and survival mode could have landed me in this specific moment.

Troubled, yet loved. Loved for fighting, not warily rejected for struggling.

That’s not something I was raised by fundamentalist Christianity to expect. I learned to pretend to believe in unconditional love, to break my back trying to offer it to others, but to never expect it in return. I had seen too many times what happened to people who truly needed it. The subtle and cruel duplicity of high control, religious love.

I’m trying to keep sight of the bigger picture. The beauty and organic love in a tough season of transition, the exhilaration of fresh air even in a downpour.

I’m trying to lean into the “and, both” philosophy, that two conflicting realities can be true at once, and almost always are. I try to embrace the good things in my life and trust that I really am grateful for them, even on the days where the struggle gives me tunnel vision. I’m beginning to understand that the crises feel bigger and harder because I’m finally safe enough to start processing deeper levels of the trauma vault. Feeling frustration and sorrow about my deep distrust of relationships is a complicated gift. It hurts, but if I can finally see it, I can learn how to heal it.

I start with a new therapist this week, so we’ll see how that goes.

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A/N: Apologies if my last few posts have seemed to be coming from a dark place. I see a lot of content on social media about happily-ever-after success stories, whereas most of us are in what feels like this eternal messy middle. It’s really hard to challenge the way things have always been, and I’ve been confronting some pretty steep mountains in my life. I figure the journey is worth documenting, and I do so as an offering of hope and solidarity.

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On a different note, one of my goals this year is to be a little more consistent on this blog. I’m starting with once a month, every first Tuesday. Wish me luck! 

DECONSTRUCTION JOURNALS IX

How do I push back against the hopeless darkness of depression and burnout when I’ve been scalded deep by toxic positivity?

How do I embrace the joy, love, and support in each day when emotionally, I’m stuck in a snapshot of time when my last shreds of safety were crushed and betrayed?

I have grown a lot of good in my life since those days, but I struggle to trust any of it. I’m always on some level waiting for it to be a trick, or to be ripped away the second I allow myself to become vulnerable. I fail to notice good omens, and take the bad days as confirmation that I’m lost to the dark.

Acknowledging that my internal and external realities are inconsistent is useful on good days. But most of the time, it rings a perverse harmony with the manipulation and thought-policing of my past.

The depression is familiar. But if I allow myself to feel the things I push away, I’m afraid to find out what chaos it could unleash in my life. I might immediately quit my job without a backup plan, leave my support network in the city and move back in with my parents, give up on every dream I ever had.

But maybe I need that.

Maybe the dismantling of my life would nullify the ways I am genetically resistant to peace.

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A/N: I’m angry today. Wish healing weren’t so complicated.

RECIPE OF AN ANXIETY ATTACK

Stick the landing. Always stick the landing.

You’re in the process of reconstructing your identity and everything you found safety in from the ground up, but don’t skip a beat. Don’t falter, don’t mess up, ever. Don’t look at the warning signs, they’ll only slow you down.

Go to work every day, embrace the extra hours and effort of the side hustle. Bright, perfect, productive, organized, happy, put-together.

Devastated yet friendly and patient.

Exhausted yet your performance remains flawless. Keeping it up rips away pieces of your soul, but you’re used to burning.

Capable, necessary, punctual. The list only grows longer, harder, more complicated, but no one will be able to tell you’re consumed by panic. You’ve been doing this for so long it’s an art form.

You can’t accept the alternative, so you choose self-destruction over mediocrity.

You fear that you can’t rely on anyone. Love is convenience. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

You left fundamentalism because you wanted to be human.

But this doesn’t seem much different, does it?

You’re still trying to be a machine.

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A/N: Bad habits die hard, and had to face a few of mine this week.

DECONSTRUCTION JOURNALS VIII

This week, I faced a spike in financial and housing stress. In the grand scheme of things, it was negligible. It was more likely a product of incompetence, and doesn’t at all spell my immediate eviction, but that’s what it felt like in my body.

For two full days I vibrated with stress, anxiety, and rage, struggling to let it go even after doing everything in my power to advocate for myself. I felt at once helpless, and also capable of burning down the whole world, of exploding my pattern of conflict avoidance and unleashing my righteous, inconsolable fury on the first person unfortunate enough to answer the phone. Having worked at a call center in my past, I tried very hard to be calm and amiable, despite the oppressive pounding in my chest, and cloud of prolonged anxiety attack swirling in my brain.

The problem’s not much closer to being solved due to a negligent corporate landlord, but I chose myself over my fear of getting in trouble for not throwing money at bogus charges. Then I struggled a lot with shame and intrusive thoughts about my anxiety, and whether it makes me broken or crazy. But now that a lot of the cortisol has worn off and no one’s come to kidnap my pets over my outstanding balance, I’ve become curious about my reaction to the situation.

For those two days, it immediately burned up whatever peace and joy I’ve built, like I’ve been walking around covered in gasoline this whole time. And that’s what really upset me the most.

When I step back and take stock, my life is generally trending positively. I’ve done so much inner work, and I’m finding more connection in my relationships, better health, success in my day job, and branching out in my creative work in a way that’s more life-giving than my previous social media slavery.

Yet there’s this dark cloud hanging over my life I can’t seem to shake. I always feel like I’m on a razor’s edge, on the verge of losing everything, of finding out I was never worth anything at all. Things I felt secure in have been upended, and I’m reckoning with my hard won self-confidence becoming dangerously unmoored. I find myself subconsciously braced to be rejected, isolated, and exploited despite reality actively pointing toward the opposite. And no amount of talking about the private circumstances that ate away at me last year has seemed to chase away the paranoia that I am too hard to love.

It’s made any amount of waiting in uncertainty intolerable. But isn’t life just a never ending series of change and waiting in uncertainty?

I cope by trying to do and be everything, but that’s not much of a solution. I locked something down deep inside me trying to survive a situation that’s now passed, and untangling that’s still a tough project.

I’ve come to a point in my journey where I want to spend more time looking forward and embracing what’s next, rather than looking back.

DECONSTRUCTION JOURNALS VII

I recently re-adopted my old childhood stuff from a closet in my parents’ house. As I work my way through it, sorting, cleaning, throwing away, the assortment harkens back to an innocent, boundless way of moving through the world I often struggle to access as an adult. Old water damaged drawings, stapled original comics about bugs, dinosaurs, and space aliens. Beads from broken necklaces made at vacation bible school, jars of rocks and shells from who knows where, tarnished silver tea sets, three huge storage bags full of stuffed animals. (Still figuring out what the heck to do with those stuffed animals. Goodwill or trash seems too harsh a fate…[I blame Toy Story for this angst.])

There is so much about my childhood that I loved, and that shaped me in positive ways. As I sort through my various emotional dysfunctions, I’m finding myself better able to reconnect with the joy and gravity of those moments, mementos, and the people I love.

Among the miniature dragon hoard of old gadgets, trinkets from the dentist office prize bin, and gymnastics medals, I found a pink music box. Years ago, the tiny pink ballerina that spins delicately to the music snapped off. The lid was separating in places. I had never stopped to look at it long enough to even consider that it could be fixed.

I realized I had the tools on hand. I opened a miscellaneous drawer in my kitchen, found super glue for the ballerina, and craft glue for the box. After reattaching the broken pieces, I sat holding them together until the adhesives could set.

The box has stayed mended. My solution, so simple, yet one step outside my usual cognitive patterns, had worked.

I have since learned how to mend other neglected things: how to get the stubborn mothball smell out of new jeans, how to clean the sticky plastic residue off older electronics, how to remove oil stains, or sap from car windows…

It’s unexpectedly empowering.

Each new repair I learn reminds me that I have the ability to improve my life. That I’m not at all confined to the tools, the weaknesses, the identities, I started out with. If I don’t have the tools, I can gather them. If I don’t have the knowledge, I can learn.

I’ve begun to wonder more and more what aspects of scarcity and struggle in my life lie just one step, one tool, one tablespoon of baking soda outside the way things have always been.

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Today, deconstruction feels like searching for safety amid gentle knocks on locked doors by well-meaning lovers, reverberating through the dim, stale hallways of the labyrinthine fortress I created.

I pick at the rusted locks wanting to let them in, insomnia and nightmares in my patient, scratching despair. None of the locks have keys or combinations. The terrorized adolescent that made them never designed them to open.

It was all supposed to make sense someday. The logic of my body was built on the fear of certain destruction, as the empire intended.

Was there something very wrong with me, I wonder, that I played its game so well?