Flight, Fight, Freeze or...Fuck It.

We all know how we respond when confronted in a real, life altering way.  We do not just have the one option, there are always several and we really don’t know which one will operate when confronted.  Even if we habitually respond in one way, the next traumatic or dangerous situation can provoke any of the above.

I have vacillated between flight and fight.  I tended to, when I was younger, to fight more, but as I have aged, I tend to flee.  I suppose I have also done a fair amount of freezing too.  

I have a situation that will come to a head today.  I do not know how it will turn out.  I do not know what will happen.  I do not even know exactly what I want to happen.  I just know that yesterday as it was all unfolding, I was very much in a flight and fight conundrum.  And that ultimately led me to a freeze situation where I just seemed to hover in liminal time.  As I churned in place, I could not find my way clear to a plan of action past my tension between my very real need to flee and my very real inclination to fight.  Analysis paralysis became my default.  For every single option I had available to me, I had an equally compelling counter option which left me in a state of high anxiety, fear and a level of desperation I haven’t felt in a long time.

On top of all of that, my ongoing neck pain was out of control, no doubt in response to the off the charts stress I felt, feel.  It is not any better today and it was a restless and sleep interrupted night.  Day summarized?  Hard, painful, confusing and desperate.

But as I lay in my bed, spinning and stewing over all the possibilities and the likelihood of each potential scenario, I got this idea for another option...the fuck it option. 

Now, some of you might be saying, “that is not an option when confronted with danger...” And perhaps a true literal physical danger that would be true.  But yesterday as I was suffering and laboring under my own emotional crisis, after spending a fair amount of time and energy in all the other options, I arrived and settled, quite happily on the fuck it option.

The fuck it option is where you just surrender and in that surrender you accept that you could get pummeled good.  That all evasive, combative or still reactions have their merits and downsides but none of them works.  I needed something greater and less in that moment.  And fuck it, arrived right on time.

I do not mean that I stopped caring about the eventual outcome.  I do not mean that my anxiety which was off the fucking charts abated immediately.  I do mean that I just said, “fuck it, it will be what it will be...I am tired and spent and I just do not have the bandwidth to freak out about this situation anymore.”  I made a choice to fuck it and move on with my day and life.

I have done everything I can think to do.  I have considered all the options.  I have talked to all the people.  I have thought it through ad nauseam.  And what I came to, right after the fuck it, is that I cannot have what I quite desperately want, and that is control.  I cannot force others to see it my way, I cannot force them to value and respect me, I cannot make them see it from my perspective, I cannot really make anyone do anything they are not already inclined to do.  I lack power and that was and is my dilemma.

I wanted to control it.  I wanted to manage it.  I wanted to do all the things so that I could feel safe, and secure and ok in a situation that is not going to likely give me any of the above things:  control, safety, security or good vibes.  It is a fraught situation which I bear partial responsibility for being at and in.

Once I saw the fallacy of my thinking, the completely ridiculous notion that I had the power to control the outcome of this, I surrendered and accepted that I was making myself and likely several of you who are reading this right now, crazy.  So I said fuck it, it will just have to be what it will be. 

I do not know what will happen later today, fuck, I don’t even know what will happen in five minutes.  I think I do, because I have routine and stability.  However, life has a way of upending all of that shit and pushing you out of one fray and into another.

Some might argue that fuck it means I no longer care.  To the contrary, I think I care more now.  I think I care more deeply and honestly than I did when I vacillating between flight, fight and freeze.  Fuck it allowed me to rise above all of that and see that none of those gave me access to what I really needed in the situation, faith.  Faith that I will be ok, that there is a plan for me, that I have survived thus far in life 100% of my bad days, decisions and life choices.  And if it is my time to go from this place, this job, this relationship, this situation, this idea, this person, then I have absolutely no power to stop it.  Life and death comes for you in equal measure and import.  When it is your time to leave, literally and metaphorically, it is your fucking time.  And none of us like that fact, and all of us attempt to control it and waste precious fucking time missing out on however much time we have left in this world.

It was a very helpful reminder that a member of my sangha (Buddhist community) just lost her husband less than a week ago to brain cancer.  Nothing I was dealing with yesterday had anything at all to do with cancer, death or dying.  So that provided me a supportive platform for gratitude.  No matter how hard it was yesterday or how hard it might be today, I have not just lost my husband to brain cancer.  I mean, I know you have to have a husband to lose one but you know what I mean.  I felt the loss of this woman, her family and friends.  I was able to use her life and experience to underscore where my problems were on a life severity scale.  I am sure she would have happily traded me my problems yesterday for hers.  In my world, her husband would live on...

I am grateful for the perspective adjustment death and fuck it provide.  If I am not risking the life or limb of anyone in my presence, distant or close, then I am doing pretty fucking well.  If no one is at risk of perilous dying, then we are actually doing pretty fucking well.  

So I said fuck it to me, my spinning head and my absolute desire to force solutions and agendas.  I just said fuck it and made a decision to walk into whatever blades come for me.  Knowing, of course, that a fatality is likely not waiting on the other side of those spinning life blades.  I mean, at least as far as I can guess or surmise. And since death is not a likely outcome for any scenario I can fathom, then we are all actually doing pretty good.

So I said fuck it to myself about myself and then carried on with my life which, as you know, is already in progress...

My deep and heartfelt thanks to all of you who answered my panicked texts and calls all day yesterday and the day before and the day before that.  Thank you for your time, love and grace.  Thank you for helping me see that my only real decision in all of this is how I decide to show up.  Do I want to be hard and desperate and full of blame and resentment?  Or would I rather just accept that I, like others, have done the best that I can and that, perhaps, is just not good enough to sustain what is already underway.  And that is ok, there is a path forward, even if I don’t see it yet and am having a hard time believing it even exists.

Change requires pivoting and pivoting is hard, painful and distressing.  But fuck it is an oasis of calm, perhaps it can only found within the eye of the storm, the temporary shelter from the onslaught of thunderous fear and anxiety.  I can spend my time in this place freaking the fuck out, which never has done one person any good, or I can just accept that whatever will be, will be and if this is the place this whole thing crumbles, that is ok.  That is fine.  Perhaps, even, it is just what is meant to be.

Fuck it allows me to get behind that in a very real way and show up for my already in progress life.  To move forward with a little bit of grace and love and peace and dignity and faith.  So I guess, and I say this with the most spiritual part of me, fuck it and so it will be...

Again, still...