I feel like I have spent a good 8 months stuck in my own head this year, I started the year off right and had a game plan and like life things changed. I had some moments were I took things to some extremes (food, and well alcohol for hot minute as well) that it took me a bit to get back to center. And my confidence of where I stood at my work place I feel really was knocked off a big peg more then I originally thought when it all went down. I felt a little ruffle of the feathers and a shot the ego when a promotion opportunity that I felt maybe I was a shoe in for (even if I wouldn't admit it out loud) didn't go as plan, aka I didn't get it.
Though I think all the drama that happened right after really took my already shaky confidence and pushed me over flat on my face. I'll admit I don't think I have fully gotten up and dusted myself off from that whole incident yet. Like I said I have had some moments of extremes since then in different worlds, but I'm sitting up for once look up at the world ready to dust myself up and stand up and move on.
There are days I feel this more and I get the heart and the encouragement to really thrive again, and then there are days I'm thrown off track and I feel back down on the ground and defeated.
Though in that same moment I feel more sure (or at least more connected) to my own self in the mirror then I ever felt in a long time. I guess you can say I may be down, but don't count me out yet.
Through out my life a lot the time I was very quiet (perhaps seemed like a shy person) because I have since I was really young been very aware of myself and how others see me and how others see each other. How we judge and nit pick at times each other to mostly protect ourselves, from people doing it to us. If we point out someone else faults or issues, perhaps people wont turn and look at us and see what were so desperately trying to make sure they don't see. In the same token we are so consumed with how others see us that really only a select few even do because they are so much more concerned with how you see them.
I think for the longest time I wanted to prove myself as something that couldn't be defined as a label that everyone wants to stick you in as well as at the same time be accepted as some who belonged. So it that I was always fighting back and forth with trying to fit in and blend with a group I was impressed with and tried to impress them and at the same time trying not to fit into the labels or boxes people wanted to put me into.
And in a round about way because that got frustrating and exhausted to fight all the time, I gave up. I found things that worked and were comfy and I liked. Maybe not loved but liked enough to wear, and in the same token found myself a few months in after that looking in my closet feeling defeated because nothing really was "me" and everything was just eh. Though when I tired to go find me, it was intimating to say the least. So I stuck with the known route, the safe route.
I've still struggling with that to this day, more so how to over come the rut instead of route I've taken and become stuck within and find myself again. Perhaps not inside, but out.
I feel like in the past years I have really come into my own and think a lot of it has to do with one of the roles I do a work where I'm stage, because when I was younger I always dreamed of performing on stage or being in front a crowd or audience.
I tired out for a few plays in high school (though was never picked) and the thing that was my issue the most was all these battles inside my head these issues I was fighting over labels and boxes and judgment and wanting to belong and be accepted came straight to the forefront of my head before getting on stage and the flight or fight responds would kick in with anxiety and fear and things would never go as plan. I would want to run, or I would be too in my head to make the performance good. I remember having that feeling during training for my role I do on stage/with field trip groups at work and having moments where I felt like I should go up to my manager and back out and say hey um how bout I not do this. I resorted to even writing "Hakuna Matata" on my hand as a reminder to well "have no worries" and calm down.
It had some bumpy starts and some times where I connected to the adults more then the kids, and had to be talked to and asked if I really wanted to stay on with that position. Something inside of me said I needed to see this through, I needed to get to the point where this became almost second nature to be on stage and do these demos and shows. So I worked on it and I still think back to that anxiety feeling I had before (the stage fright) every once and while before I go and do a show or demo for a school group. I've had a day where it came back (esp. if say we do a completely new show) and my shows were off and then I have my moment were I think how far I've come because while there is still a nerves to it because the crowd is always different there is also a familiarity to it as well as a peace of mind that comes with it. In those moments when I can really just be on stage and be in the moment and do the show that may not be one of my favorites having done it thousands of times now (3 years now) there is also a stillness a peace to going through it and interacting with the people and giving them a good show and perhaps teaching them something new.
In being on stage I have found myself, but my inner self still is hiding within a shell. I have realized in the past months (probably longer then that, but never wanted to agree to it) that my weight is a shell, a protection from the outside world. But more then my weight, food (as much as I don't want to admit to this, I know if there is something there when I think about it) has become some what of an addiction for me as well, a coping skill. A security blanket as you will, the thing that doesn't judge or talk back or ridicule me. (I hate this, but I know if I'm having trouble with saying it out loud, or even admitting it to myself it must be true ) When life has been bad, or even good food is something I have turned to just like movies and TV and books.
A place to escape from my life, this life that is such a magical thing to even get to experience.
I'm getting ahead of myself here, food has been there for me when I needed to talk (when I should have talked) about my anxiety my needing to belong and not being able to find it. I had art and my writing (I wrote songs when I was younger; more like rhythmic poetry) to help me with it, but still it kept it all inside and in turn I would turn to food. I remember even in 3-5th grade staying up late after my family (at my dad's) would go to sleep and eating food and watch television (mostly infomercials or old TV shows from the 50's) and trying to cope with this feeling of who I was and who I wanted to be and the judgment of society and wanting to be accepted and belonging. Maybe I was being a bit melodramatic, but it felt all too serious and real to me. I felt that if I could be anyone else it the world it would be better, there was probably a good solid year I was pray at night to wake up as someone else, to be reborn and be able to start all over again as a baby, I destroyed a lot of pictures of that time frame I took to as I saw it in my eyes help me disappear easier. I never felt like I could be my true self I never felt like I could just be me. I have slowly gotten over that as I've gotten older and gotten tired of trying to make the worlds of not being labeled and boxed in and fitting in and belonging coincide together.
Plus, it also helps to have gained some really awesome friends along the way who know me and accept me for all my greatness to all my well neurosis. As I do the same for them, no questions asked.
Part of my problem when I finally realized where this was all heading when I finally was able to sit up from being knocked down early this year was that I could never get out of my head to see life again in all its glory. I was stuck in the whole system of dates and times and needing to have things figured out by a certain time to make other things work out in my life to make ideas and plans I have for myself go the way I hope the would. But I think we get the picture now, that well life isn't always as we plan it to be, is it?
I have also had a lot of reminders as of late, that though life seems like years and years, it can also be very short. I'm reminded of that in the fact that a coworker's death anniversary is coming up in about two months (and an old friend has been gone for 2 years now), as well as seeing how much of a twist one of my favorite TV shows can shock me with a death of a character unexpectedly. As well hearing my mom come home to tell me she saw a coworker literally take their last breath at work before falling the ground and watching them change colors in font of her face (graphic? sorry.) and how they stabilized the coworker only to get her to the hospital and then she finally passed. And then hearing once again today that a coworker of hers who I met briefly at target randomly when my mom ran into him passed away Monday from his fight with cancer (she has had two people now die from it this year that she knows) and all I can think about is the daughter he had with him when I met them, and hoping her and the family is doing well.
Though in all this sadness I also remember the precious little life that was recently brought into this world by my cousin on my dad's side. This brand new life that knows nothing about life or death right now, but is learning and seeing everything for the first time. And what a magical thing that is, and how simple is it if she could just be her true self and experience it all knowing she only needs to be herself.
How simple it could be if we all could be, and I remember for the first time in a long time, what I want to fight for in this life of mine.
