Time Travel
Today, I remembered events from this date exactly four years ago. This was the date I realized I needed to change my life; this was the date I told two different people how I really felt about them. This was the date that I finally let myself feel my emotions.
Tomorrow’s date is the date (four years ago) I called a suicide hotline because I was in so much emotional pain that I wanted to die. I told the crisis operator I wasn’t suicidal, just that I felt like I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. She told me they couldn’t help me because I wasn’t suicidal. So, I started counseling and drug therapy a couple of days later, neither of which helped.
I had the same feeling this morning, to be frank, but now I understand it’s an idiosyncratic physiological response. Now, at least, I can recognize that those feelings will pass. It’s not easy to put on a placid face when I’m feeling like that, but at least I know it will pass.
I also thought about this date eight years ago, and I marvel at how different my life is now. I could never have imagined I’d be where I’m at now. I live in a different state, I have a completely different career, I run my own small business, I am not married, I play music, I own a house, I have a dog, I have a garden, I have some control over my future… It seems surreal.
If someone had told that 22-year-old version of me how much my life would change in such a short time, I would have scoffed in bitterness and derision. I feel strange when I think of the thoughts I had back then. I was fully aware I was living a life I didn’t want to live, but I also knew I had to live it. No, I thought I was supposed to live that life. I remember I felt hopeless and trapped, and I remember telling myself all the time, “This is the life I’m supposed to be living, this is how it was supposed to go.”
In some ways, I’d like to be that person again. I’d like to have that certainty and purpose. I’d like to feel justified in my choices and secure in my identity. I have none of that now. I don’t know what or who I am, and I don’t know that I ever will. I would love to feel like I have my feet on the ground… but I don’t. I don’t know why I can’t just dig in my heels and tell myself this is the life I’m supposed to be living.
I think I feel like my life is in a continual state of transition. I can’t tell how it’s going to go, and there is no certainty.
I’ve been highly and regularly disconcerted for the past few months, and I realized this is because my intuition isn’t working right. I screwed up last year by trying to override my natural disposition in the wrong ways. I am now struggling to find my way back to that understanding I had – I want to get back to that knowledge that my instincts are right. I want to feel like it’s okay to be me. I feel desperate to feel that feeling.
I know a lot of my insecurity and confusion exists because my brain is all wonky now. I mean, I actually know this in an intelligent way. I’m completely aware my thoughts aren’t natural; I just can’t do anything about it for some reason. I think, “That is not the truth.” But I can’t convince myself to think the true thought. I’m stuck ruminating, even as I realize I’m stuck ruminating.
I don’t like feeling helpless like that, as if I’m a victim of my own mind, destined to live in misery while being completely aware of the nature of maladaptive thought processes and coping mechanisms I am using. That’s some kind of double torture right there – misery and the knowledge of the misery’s falsity, but no way to assert or confirm I shouldn’t be suffering.
I shouldn’t be suffering. That’s the truth.
I am able to break out of the suffering each day, and that’s something. In the past, I’d be stuck in pain for weeks at a time. Now, I feel those feelings each day for those same weeks, BUT I can tamp it down if I remember how to redirect my thought processing. I guess that counts as progress. It doesn’t really feel like it during these times, to be sure. But the fact that I’m writing coherently just twelve hours after feeling debilitating heartache means I am progressing.
I realized yesterday that the suffering is coming from trying to change things that make me who I am. It’s no secret I live in a state of heartache and longing. This is unintentional, believe me, but it is the truth. One of the problems, though, is that I think I need to get out of those feelings. People keep telling me I need to get out of those feelings. People keep telling me it’s pointless to feel those feelings. People keep telling me I have no reason to feel those feelings. And, I can see that they’re right in a societal sense – normal people aren’t supposed to feel things like that. Normal people aren’t supposed to feel passion and love and intimacy without having a mate to feel those things for. Normal people “have to move on”, and truly believe that “all things must come to an end”.
I don’t believe those things at all, because I see the universe is fluid and infinite. All things come to an end in the same moment they begin, because there is no end or begin; they exist at all times, regardless of the human need for control. Things just are. These feelings just are. They are a part of me because I am a part of the universe, and I am fluid and infinite.
Those thoughts of “I shouldn’t feel this.” are insidious because they pop up when I’m trying to force myself to exist as a normal person. Those thoughts are a creeping darkness in me. When I think them, my brain starts to go dull and I start to feel ill and anxious. I get to feeling insecure, then start to think I must be wrong for feeling the way I feel. I start trying to think of ways to “fix” my feelings, to fix how I am. That’s how I end up falling into rumination – I start thinking of all the ways I’m not enough, and it crushes me. I understand now that I need to let myself exist as I am, even if it doesn’t make social sense.
Today, will be the day I remember in the future as “The Day I Decided It Is Okay To Feel How I Have Always Felt.”
Today, I have decided to just be.