surprise! i keep feeling the way that i feel!

whaddya know

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

act one

I’m trying to move house. Not trying. What I mean to say is that I will move house, and soon. Sometime before summer arrives, flaming into the muggy, still months. I say all this in the hope that something about the action of the words I WILL MOVE HOUSE being written and read and read propels this affirmation into fact - some forward motion - and I will find the Perfect Place…

and that when I apply, my paperwork goes through without a hitch, floating to the top of the pile of interested applicants. It’s Real in Los Angeles and New York. You must arrive at the open houses ready to pounce. You can’t be unprepared or unsure. You need to be charming, call the agent by their first name a lot, and have all your ducks in a row. My ducks are not in a row, so I have to pretend. I am recently coming up against some of the things that keep me where I am. Well, aren’t we all? Maybe not keep me where I am - that’s dramatic - but factors that hold on to my feet, weighing me down a little bit. For transparency, here are some of them:-

1. I’m still saying yes when I mean No, Go Away.

What I do love about getting older is that we are getting to know ourselves by now. However, life is still peppered with those aha, throw-you-against-the-wall moments. By now, you might actually have developed the confidence to look deeply at yourself and think - oh no, no more of that. No more yeses that aren’t full-body yeses. No more spending the rest of the time feeling angry with yourself and resenting the people involved, even though it isn’t their fault. It was your responsibility to know, and you ignored yourself. If you have done this enough, you know what I mean. You get so, so sick of living life this way. I am learning from some of my recent decisions that I am still a little conflict-averse. Excuse me while I end the month overextending, serving my self-imposed sentences, and not getting paid on time. Needless to say (or is it?) I’m working on everything. Don’t you dare feel sorry for me.

2. I hate to be that person;

that cliche,

but I still avoid asking for help.

I tell everyone to ask me when they need help, but when I’m in a bind, I will literally wait until I’m pressed up against the boulder of tears and impossibility before uttering a whisper for assistance. I want to say it’s because I'm benevolent; and it has nothing to do with being proud and insecure and deathly scared of bothering people and the rejection that could possibly spring forth. I don’t care to admit that it is likely an ego thing, or that I want to feel like a distant, glamorous superwoman because that’s what I thought women had to be: emerging from the depths of hell with unwrinkled clothes, twinkly eyes, a wry story to tell, a hair toss. But life doesn’t work that way, and if you don’t share your large wars, you might lose your large wars -know what I mean?

3. I still skew largely toward isolation.

For better or for worse. Like I’m this person who really really wants connection but is also so tragically this;

So I try to get well versed in Opposite Action. The internet says…

Opposite action is a dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT) skill that involves choosing to do precisely the opposite of what your emotions tell you to do. It allows us to decide to respond in a way that is opposite to what our biological response would activate us to do. So when this propensity to lock myself away shows itself by making me dog tired before any social event with people I dont know - or wondering why it is worth going to anything ever - I try to go in fully. Meet new people. Talk to Those New People. That kind of thing.

…..

act 2

Another new skill I am learning…

how to sense and neutralise the low-key triggers in various situations, from the obvious to the seemingly innocuous. An example of the latter: