I feel lost. Truth be told, I am lost. I have no job, no idea what I am really doing. I am starting a new business, my son is coming home, my daughter is struggling, I am getting a puppy. In some ways, my life has never felt more mine...which is a good thing and also hard. I’m hard. Always have been.
I have been super pissed at myself since making this very stupid banking error. Causing me to be short by $14k. The good news is that I was able to cover my error, and in like a month or so I should have the money back. But I am still mad at me for making the error in the first place. I can’t seem to let it go. I feel so dumb and not in control of my own finances. I need to let it go and stop bludgeoning myself, yet here I am angry and upset with myself. It isn’t fatal, just stupid. And if there is one thing I cannot forgive myself for, it is being stupid.
So I am lost. Next week, in the desert for a few days. Right now, in my every day life. I forget, always how much I need the structure of work to keep me moving in a forward direction. When life is up to me and my ideas and whims, I tend to feel and be lost.
I am currently operating on the “one must be lost to ever be found” principle. This time feeling unmoored and adrift is required. It is essential to getting to a new place with myself.
Mostly I am excited for all the changes, not the banking error, that is still eating my fucking lunch. But everything else I am happy about. I am enjoying the down time doing things that I love and make me feel safe: cleaning, organizing, purging. I know this is likely diagnosable. But it is what makes me feel good. Control. And I really have so little of it. So little power in the grand scheme of things. Purging, cleaning, organizing is my way of exercising what control I do have and getting everything just so, which allows me to not freak the fuck out about all the lost I feel.
So much change in the world and this is reflected in my own life. I seem to want these incongruent things...to be free and yet to be tied. I have this idea where I am traveling to distant lands, exploring the globe, and yet I am getting a puppy today which only ties me down to my home more. Like always, I have this need to be free, coupled with this need to be needed. Which always leave me in this place where I conflicted as my needs are in fact incongruent. And this leaves me at odds with myself.
Except, except that I am 52. And I have an entire lifetime of being like this. So it is familiar. And in some ways, it is just how I am. A bunch of conflicting needs, ideas and ways of being that result in me being me. And I guess I am not really wanting to change that all that much. Because I still take action that results in me being like this...so I must like it on some level. All behavior is purposeful. All of it. Even puppy acquistions.
I can and will admit that I feel lost. I feel like I do not know exactly what I am doing. Which is always how I feel when I have down time. Too much of it and it really sets me off. And I am now closing out my third week of unemployment...and so lost is the best way I can describe how I feel.
I have been to this lost place a lot in my life. Usually while pretending that I didn’t feel that way. Today, I can own it and I will call that progress. I am currently sitting in my bed, surrounded by two cats and a dog who adore me. We spend our early mornings like this every day. Hard to feel too lost when surrounded by this much love and adoration. It doesn’t even bother me that they are getting the bed all furry...that is how much I love them. My need to feel this uncomplicated, unadulterated love, seemingly endless. So much intimacy for me is shared with animals. They are safe, they have no ulterior motives. They are just them, loving, giving, making me laugh. They need me but in a way that doesn’t make me feel like I want to run. And as I have owned before, I am a flight risk. Not sure that is ever going to change.
So I am lost right now and I know that this is needed in order for me to be found again. Who am I now that I am not working at my old job? The job that consumed me for almost eight years. The whole of my middle aged single life? Who the fuck am I now?
Well, simply, I am still me. I am who I have always been, but better. I am better now. Even lost, I am better. Able to have a little distance and reprieve from who I was that was wholly dysfunctional. Glad to be moved on, and yet grieving it at the same time. Excited for all the new opportunities. But also questioning God’s will for me, never really sure of what it is that I am doing. Some weird ass combination of God’s will and reckless Erin will that often feels like walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. Both - God and me. They both result in the same exact feeling. I feel more sure when I have my self convinced that it is God’s will. But the truth is that I am never totally sure.
Lost seems to be an actual location for me right now. Like I am in the middle of the wilderness but my phone is still able to ping the search and rescue team. And I am not really sure that I want to be found...like I kind of want to turn off the tracking and just sit still for a bit. Really, really, really be lost. But I also want to live. I do not want to be stranded in the middle of myself with no safety. And that is a feeling that I am trying to change. That being alone is unsafe. It isn’t. In fact, it is the most safe I ever really feel. That and being with animals. They always make me feel grounded, safe and loved. Every single time.
I return to that place where I live on some ranch in the middle of the woods, surrounded by horses, cats, dogs, goats, chickens and whatever else happens to walk into my life. Nothing to do but wander the woods, read, write. It beckons to me. It calls me. It feels like my future. Lost to be found. If only by myself.
Again.
Still.
