Creating a Life...

We all do it, every day.  We are all engaged with our lives: living them, building them, sometimes destroying them.  But we are all here creating a life that we deem worth living.

For a long time, my life was some sort of self created prison that I was always planning some great escape from...like I was being held hostage in my life, by me, and well, life.  And I was always trying to find an end run around living the life I had.  Getting sober helped immensely.  But sadly, drinking yourself into oblivion all the time is not the only way to escape from life.  Relationships, dating, shopping, eating, not eating, exercising, hell even reading are escape routes from your life.  And I have deployed all of them.

I think the key is to build a life you no longer want to escape from (and that takes, in my experience, a great deal of patience, loyalty to yourself, healing, direction, dedication and patience) is to heal all the things that make you want to run away, or hide.  And that is no small task.  In fact, when I just wrote that I had a mild panic attack!  How the fuck are you supposed to do that???  Just heal all your shit, great Erin, just great fucking advice.  

But it is true.  And if you take care of the larger, more glaring issues first, the rest will take care of themselves if you stay committed to building a life you do not need or want to escape from...

I am sure you have heard of the big rock theory, right?  If you want to put rocks in a jar, (I know this whole thing kind of falls apart if you have no desire to jar rocks, but bear with me...) you have to put the larger ones in first, then you can add the smaller ones.  Same principle applies here.  If you are killing yourself with drugs and alcohol, probably need to start on that issue first and get that shit under control.  Or maybe you have an eating disorder, and that is the main relationship in your life and you can’t really maintain any others because you and your eating disorder have no room to work with anyone else.  Or perhaps it is workaholism, and you disappear into your work, earning, and success.  

I guess you start creating a life you do not need an escape hatch for by dealing with your most glaring defects first, and then use the same process by which you gained some grace over that first issue to solve your other ones.  And the result of all this hard work is that eventually, you will have a life you do not want to escape from.

This doesn’t mean that your life is never hard again, painfree, easy, free of sorrow, loss and heartbreak.  But what it does mean is that even when those bedevilments come, your life is a place of solace and comfort instead of being a place for destruction and harm.

Not everything is going great in my life right now.  But I still wake up, every day and I am happy to be here.  I have faith that if I just keep plodding along, I will endure and survive life’s latest hardship.  And while I am going to be miserable, sad, lonely, scared, lost and sad, I still have this amazing life that provides me compassion, interest, friendship, comfort, healing and a reason to get out of bed every day...

There is a quiet, exquisite luxury to waking up in your life every day and not wanting to be somewhere else...and I don’t think we talk about that enough.  My eyes open every day, usually to the purrs of a cat or two or five.  They greet me with their interest, curiosity and warmth every single day.  The dog peers into my room, stretches and wags at me.  This life I have curated has all these beings that are so happy I am here and now awake.  I mean, does it get any better?  I mean, sure, it would be lovely to wake up next to someone who is almost as excited to see me as my cats and dog, but, that isn’t in my cards and that is ok.  

In addition to waking up easy and clear, loved and adored, I move into this life that is peaceful, calm, abundant and in progress.  Sure there are hard things going on, but I have a plan of attack, I have a formula that works, I have a spiritual framework to hang the hard things on that support me being able to move through those things while not burning down my life or needing to escape from it...

I don’t know how you create the life you don’t need to escape from, I only know how I did it.  But I absolutely know that if I can do it, so can you.  I am not any better at this whole living thing than anyone else.   There is no magic formula, or special sauce.  It is just finding what brings you joy, stability, peace, comfort and then choosing that day after day, moment after moment, regardless of what all your haters say or do...

Again, still...