So, on re-editing the old posts that I found in my “Post Graveyard” I found myself a wee bit confused.
Wow! I sounded so happy!
I said things like “Life was great” and “I have so much to be grateful for“.
I just sounded so dam fucking perky!
I found a huge part of me wanting to delete all those words and simply scream
“You hypocrite! You liar!!!
Why are you lying……?”
But I didn’t.
Because the one thing that I have started to do more these last two years is to make space….
To make space for all the different parts of me.
So, I decided instead to take a little trip down memory lane and read all my journals from 2020….
(There are 5! …..Did I mention I wrote a shit load?)
Was I really happy when I wrote those posts?
Or was I just doing what I have done my whole life?
Slapping on my happy face.
“Everything is just fine!”
Truth be told I don’t even realize I’m doing it anymore.
It just comes so naturally to me!
And if I am down, If I can’t “fake the happiness” then I hide.
I hide away for as long as it takes for “Happy Gayle” to resurface” and thank God, she always does!
I’m like an energizer bunny that way!
But isn’t that just life?
Life’s hard, right?
Aren’t we all just going through the motions, showing up to the party, doing the best we can?
Unfortunately these last two years…it felt like my energizer bunny finally ran out of steam.
They have been the hardest 2 years of my life. I have been so bowled over by anxiety at times getting out of bed felt impossible. I have struggled with triggers and anxiety attacks where all I can do is cry.
It felt like I spent 2020 living in an “emotional washing machine.”
I’d wake up every morning completely washed out by my dreams.
Not nightmares per se. Just manic, movie-like, shame-inducing dreams.
Dreams that made no sense at all and just left me feeling horrible.
I’d open my eyes and it felt like someone was standing on my chest with a boot, daily.
I’d start the emotional washing machine….
I’d meditate…
I’d journal….
I’d go for a walk….
I’d do some pilates….
I’d sleep (LOTS)….
I’d listen to countless hours of audiobooks trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me?
To answer that one question:
“Why does everything hurt?”
I had a daily journal that I recorded everything in…
Every meal I ate…
How much water I drank…
How much green tea I drank…
How many ‘steps’ my walks were…
How many hours I wrote for…
Every emotion I felt…
Every day was given a mark out of ten.
I seriously felt that If I kept track of EVERYTHING.…then maybe I could start to feel like I was in control of something?
By 2pm (ish) the anxiety would slowly start to lift a bit…. I would start to feel more human…. I didn’t feel so stained, broken and messy….
I could climb out of my emotional washing machine.
I could get on with my day.
And yes, sometimes I’d write a post in that space of feeling “normal/happy” again….
I’d hook into that “positive feeling” and milk it for all its worth.
But I couldn’t post them….
Because I felt like the biggest fake!
How could I possibly show that side of myself, while there were so many parts of me that I felt I needed to keep hidden?
…. parts of me that were simply screaming to be heard, desperate to be seen and validated.
And I had no idea how to do that for them….
I didn’t know how to love them.
How many times in my life had I heard that mundane platitude: You have to love yourself first!!!
OH my God the internal rage!
One part of me lambastes: “How the hell do you do that?”
“Where on earth is that fucking “I-love-me” handbook?
I don’t think I got given my copy!”
Another part is confused as shit: ” But I thought I DID love myself?”
“I have been working on myself for 10 bloody years.
I’m in therapy!
I’ve stopped drinking!
I’ve stopped smoking…..
I am a proverbial fucking saint!”
(Mmm….Except for my swearing maybe.)
“BUT seriously …..What more does it take?
How do I make the continual noise in my head stop?
How do I make the anxiety STOP….?”
So, 2020 was for me the penultimate year of doing “EVERYTHING” that I thought I possibly could ‘DO’ to start loving myself. (I mean the whole world was in lockdown… the one thing I had was time)
And you know what….it many ways it worked….
I would go to bed feeling happy
Life WAS good…
I WAS grateful…..for so much in my life…..
Then I’d wake up the next morning with that same fucking boot weighing down on my chest….
Crushing me with this shame and guilt that I had no understanding of.
And then it was all beautifully compounded by the fact that I couldn’t pull myself together and snap out of it…
I couldn’t make the anxiety stop…
**************************
I have learnt a lot about anxiety during these last two years ….
Most importantly……
That it is pretty dam useless trying to stop, what I don’t understand.
I had a whole host of voices in my head, all trying to tell me something.
All I heard was NOISE.
Through the writing of my poems and through my painting,
I started to simply clear a space for every single part of me and all the emotions that came with them.
Rather than getting angry and frustrated with them when they showed up ….(Cause they always did!),
I started having more compassion and understanding for WHY they had shown up.
Rather than continually trying to shut them up; I started to listen to them.
As I became more conscious and less judgemental of them;
they started to feel a little less anxious and dare I say a little more loved!
Please don’t get me wrong….I have definitely not cracked ANY code yet.
If ‘self-love’ is a mountain I have just left base camp and I am merely beginning the ascent.
BUT the good news is:
On most days; the air is beautiful.
I’ve given up the fantasy of the
illusory ‘love-me’ manual.
I’ve realized that all I can really do…
is write my own.
To be continued…….