Running

I’ve been finding it really hard to be with myself lately. But also hard to be with others.

So where does that leave things?

There’s a bit of a claustrophobic feeling. Tight, confined, trapped, maybe stuck. I know this place. I’ve been here before. But the familiarity ins’t making it any easier. I should be able to recognize this and say “I’ve gotten through this in the past, I know I’ll get through it again.” But instead, my inner monologue is “I keep coming back to this. What’s wrong that I’m missing? Why haven’t I figured out how to avoid this yet?”

I can identify where some of it’s coming from, even though I know it’s not the truth. Life is a series of ups and downs. And just because I’m in a downturn doesn’t mean that I’m doing anything wrong. It doesn’t mean I AM wrong.

It just means that I am HERE, right now, in yet another messy part of my story.

I know, I know. “Don’t believe what you think when you’re in a depressed mood.”

And yet…

This current, and particularly deep trench is partially my due to PMDD. I should be getting my period any day now. The drastic mood swings this past week have been somewhat debilitating. There haven’t been any highs, but the lows have been low. I spent two days in relative silence, moving from nothingness on the couch to nothingness in the car to nothingness in my bed. I guess it’s what my mind and body needed?

It’s partially the state of the country. Fear and anxiety are wrapped around every cell in my being. It feels like I have to get out but there are no doors. It’s dark and it’s cold and it’s echo-y. I know there are other people feeling it, too, but it’s like we’re each in our own little pockets.

It’s partially my relationship, if I can be so candid. All of this…there’s a chasm again, and every time we bridge it, it opens up wider the next time. If he can’t find a way to step closer to my reality, to understand, to empathize, to step outside his bubble and recognize that the world he lives in is not the same as mine…there’s going to be a point where we can’t stitch this back together.

I hate this uncertainty. (Yes, yes, life is uncertain. I know.)

I hate this limbo between what-is and what-will-be.

It hasn’t felt like liminal space—the transition space between two states of being or knowing. It’s been hard to sit with myself. To access my meditation training. I’m teaching a class on creating space and accepting your emotions, but it’s been tough to do either of those things for myself.

I have tried to connect with these things, to give them shape and language. But the person I’ve been speaking them out loud to, who is supposed to be there to help hold the flood that spills out, seems not to know how.

I am trying to run toward the unease and he is running away from it.

Do I just stop running?

Maybe, at some point.

I am not giving up yet, although part of me feels like I might as well just bomb everything and start over. But that’s my impatience speaking.

I am not giving up, but I am turning inward. I am going to give the things I am feeling shape and language, and speak them out loud to me. I am going to reconnect with what I want. I am going to try to remember who I am. I am going to figure out how I want to move through this one wild and precious life.

I know the way I’m moving through it right now isn’t it.

I emailed a couples’ counselor this morning.

Maybe we can do this.

Maybe he can do this.

For all of the self-discovery, self-work, and personal growth I’ve done, I don’t know how to bring someone else along with me.

Maybe that’s not my job.