I am at this place again I have been in many times. I am finding pain in things that used to bring me pleasure. And I am finding pleasure in things that used to bring me pain.
I will use this as an example: The gym. I used to avoid it because I hated going. I didn’t like anything about it: the effort required, the enduring boredom, the smell, the awkwardness I felt while there on a variety of levels. And because I didn’t go regularly it was painful. Like a lot.
But then I started going and it was all of the above things but I endured them and got to a place where what used to pain me, actually brought me pleasure. I learned to live with the things about the gym I didn’t like and go anyway.
And yesterday I was back to not wanting to be there and recycling all my old reasons for avoiding it. But I went anyway. Because that is what I do. I am a person who seems to need to recycle issues in my life. I go through something, then I make a decision based on that experience, then I conclude. And then that is fucking that. I am done with whatever it is or I am totally committed and fucking in.
But I have learned, slowly, painfully slowly, that life isn’t like that - we just aren’t one and done. An experience, a decision and then moving the fuck on. Nope. Not how it goes. Like at all.
So I am coming to terms with this more full circle kind of living that seems to fit with reality better than my version does, I feel the way I do about it and then I make a decision that is inalterable forever. Life just doesn’t seem to work that way, except in the confines of my mind.
I want to handle shit once and move the fuck on. But life, that tricky bitch, thinks that I need to apparently revisit the same shit over and over and over again. And I know I am not the only one.
So today as I lie in bed writing and feeling like I never want to get up, I shall rise, and walk the dog and do the things and the gym shall be one of them. Even though my motivation is flagging on it right now. I like the effects produced in my body, mind and spirit when I take care of myself. And I am quite afraid of that voice that resides in my mind that says “let’s not do that thing anymore, and there are so many others things we shouldn’t do either...” That is the voice that wants to kill me and I know it.
I am not sure everyone has a voice in their head that tells them that they shouldn’t be here anymore, a self destructive streak that is very efficient in the self destruction and convincing. All I need do is let up on my program, my schedule, stop doing the things that make that voice in my mind, smaller and more manageable. And then I am fucked and so are any of you that rely on me for anything at all.
Full circle living requires a level of acceptance that what has happened will likely happen again and again until I am dead. And that is just the way things are. There isn’t something wrong that won’t pass and there isn’t some right that won’t fall away. That is just how life is and the more I can accept and integrate that into my experience of life living, the happier I it seems I will be.
I have a full weekend coming up. Several parties, lots to do, travel coming up next week. Lots of new relationships and new events and new things and the holidays. I am overwhelmed. It is all good really but it is making me kind of grouchy. Everything in my life is going so well but it often feels like too much and I need to own that for whatever reason, I am having a hard time right this minute with all the good in my life. And that fucker that lives in my head is taking full opportunity to tell me some shit that isn’t true, that is meant to derail me and send me spiraling off into old behavior. (It was a very bad day when I saw that when old behavior is happening in present time, it isn’t old fucking behavior, it is current behavior...I think I just went back to bed after seeing that one).
Full circle living requires a level of honesty from me that says that most of the stress I am feeling is of my own making. It is me causing all the fictitious pressure. No one I know really cares what I get them for the holidays. No one I know cares what my house looks like. People do care that I show up for work. That I parent and care for my child at home. That I am of service to people who need me. It is really up to me whether I let all this wonderful stuff life dropped in my lap to turn me into an ungrateful bitch or if I allow all the things currently happening to soften me, slow me down and make me more present in my life.
It is always up to me because my attitude is really the only thing over which I have much control at all...again, still.
And just like this photo, life is always full of an equal balance of things that are solid and real and things that are just reflections of the reality I see and feel.
