Tag: spiritual journey

I am going away for a while but I’ll be back don’t try and follow me, ’cause I’ll return as soon as possible… see, I’m trying to find my place, but it might not be here where I feel safe, we all learn to make mistakes and run from them, from them with no direction, we’ll run from them, from them, with no conviction… ’cause I’m just one of those ghosts travelin’ endlessly, don’t need no roads, in fact, they follow me and we just go in circles…

I wasn’t myself today. Whoever that is. I wasn’t her. I wasn’t anyone really. It felt like I starting back at day 1. Today is day 65. And I felt completely lost.

Everything felt like it was happening in slow motion. It’s hard for me to explain. But it just kind of felt like I was there. And I just tried my hardest to stay under the radar because I didn’t know how to navigate through it. It was new for me and so I just tried to let it ride, whatever it was.

Everyone I came in contact with today made it a point to let me know that my usual cheery, albeit fake, disposition was missing today. Making a very big deal of the fact that I wasn’t being myself. Telling me I need to do better or fix whatever was happening because it was bothering them. I was still being so kind despite all of that. I didn’t react like I normally would. I just wanted them to let me be.

I came to a big realization today and it was validated as I scrolled through my friends’ stories on Instagram. A reel popped up that said “Be careful during your healing journey, some people like you better broken.” That sounds so incredibly harsh, but it’s the truth. This whole journey has been very difficult for me to navigate and I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. But the saddest part about today, with everyone pecking at me about how I was in a bad mood, when I wasn’t in any mood, actually, made me realize that when I’m not who I was before I started this, I don’t make sense to them. And it’s not that I don’t still want to be that person who cares for people. It’s that caring about myself has become a priority and that’s weird for all of us.

I have done a lot of work but starting the day feeling like the slate was wiped clean felt like a failure at first. It got a little less heavy as the day went on. I felt a twinge of hope that maybe this was a good thing? I’m always feeling ALL the feelings, so to not have any felt foreign but was also kind of peaceful. I felt like a ghost, with no real purpose. I was just here/there, existing. And I’m not writing this as a cry for help or anything. I know this isn’t permanent and I’ll be fine. I felt the need to write about it because maybe somewhere out there in the world someone else is feeling this and needed to know they’re not alone. I don’t fucking know anymore.

I did the absolute best that I could today. I stayed as light as I could. I even walked away when I saw that I was about to be seriously triggered into a reaction. It makes me sad to think that I did absolutely nothing to anyone, but because I was going through something and wasn’t my normal self, that made people mad enough to keep bringing it up to the point of trying to get a reaction out of me. My unintentional peace, rattled them. That’s not a me problem, that’s a them problem.

I feel like I have always done everything that I’m supposed to do. I’ve kept it together for everyone even when it felt like I was about to fall apart. I’ve done everything that everyone has asked of me. I went through the motions because that was easier than fighting for myself. I was uncomfortable and sad and lost sight of my value. I can still do all the things, but I’m also allowed to focus on myself every now and then. I can’t put on a show to entertain everyone anymore. It’s my fault because I allowed it. And I’m here in this very weird void because of it. I want to give you the real me, I just need to find her.

My thoughts are always coming in at 1,000 per hour and today I didn’t even care. I paid them no mind. They were all trash. They were all ego driven and served no purpose. Half of them didn’t even make sense. The fact that I knew that and made it a point to ignore them is a huge testament to the progress I’ve made. There were no unnecessary panic attacks or spirals today. And the biggest improvement that I saw was that I did not change my behavior to accommodate anyone else, which is something that the people pleaser in me would have done.

I didn’t enjoy today, but I didn’t hate it. And I’m going to use whatever today was as a jumping off point. Because I’m not exhausted from a racing heart or so many adrenaline rushes for no reason. I’m actually doing alright I guess? Today showed me that I actually do have the ability to let things go and start putting the pieces of myself back together. Even if it’s taking longer than I’d like. Even if I have set backs. I have to keep going. There is a light at the end of this very dark tunnel and it feels like I got a tiny glimpse of it today.

Quick side note: lets try to do better. If you see someone you care about going through some shit, let them go through it. They’re not actively trying to ruin your day. They’ll talk it out with you if they feel like it. And I’m not saying we all need to walk around and feel each other’s feelings. But read the fucking room please. If you don’t want to be bothered with someone going through some shit, then don’t. Just walk the fuck away. That’s okay too.

Good things are coming, I know they are. I know that this is a necessary shift for me. I have spent so many days in the dark but I have faith that the light is on its way. I’m grateful that I have the ability to see that now. And I’m grateful for this journey. It’s complicated but so am I. It’s day 65 and I was a ghost. And that just has to be okay for now.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate it more than I can express right now (insert heart hands here).

misguided ghosts travelin’ endlessly, the ones we trusted the most pushed us far away… and there’s no one road, and we should not be the same, but I’m just a ghost, and still they echo me, they echo me in circles…

Song name: MISGUIDED GHOSTS/ Artist: Paramore/ Year: 2009

when this began I had nothing to say and I’d get lost in the nothingness inside of me, (I was confused), and I let it all out to find that I’m not the only person with these things in mind, (inside of me), but all the vacancy the words revealed
is the only real thing that I’ve got left to feel, (nothing to lose), just stuck, hollow and alone, and the fault is my own, and the fault is my own…

Day 60

I have been consciously sitting with myself for 60 days. 60 days of every emotion you can think of making it’s way out of me every single day. 60 days of being uncomfortable, unsure of who I am and feeling like I’m wearing a mask. 60 long days with no end in sight. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten a little bit better. 60 days ago, I didn’t think that I would make it even one more day. I felt like I had nothing left. I know that’s not the case anymore. Obviously, I made it and continue to make it. I wish that I could say that 60 days ago I was just being dramatic or having a mid-life crisis, but it’s so much more than that. And I can’t explain it, so I’ll leave it at that.

So, what have I been doing? Well, I haven’t had any AH-HA moments or anything. It’s all very normal and seems like I already knew whatever things I have “discovered” about myself, but am finally acknowledging them. I’m realizing a lot of things that I don’t like. Whether it’s about myself directly or the way others treat me. I guess that’s a good start? I had been very comfortable living in a fog of ignoring things so that everyone else was alright, even if it meant that I wasn’t. And like I previously said, I am very fucking uncomfortable as the fog has been lifting.

I have been trying not to let myself be too much of a hermit. I feel like I don’t fit anywhere, that I’m just this awkward puzzle piece no one knows what to do with. It makes me feel strange and out of sorts. I have been trying really hard to talk things out and not let them eat me up. But most of the time I just feel like I’m rambling, not really making much sense. I keep saying that I just want clarity. I want my brain to stop feeling like it’s scrambled eggs. I want to start feeling like a 42 year old woman who has her life together and stop feeling like a lost little girl. It’s fucking infuriating. I just want to get to a good place, a place that makes sense, and some days that feels impossible.

Anyway, I’ve been stuck way longer than the last 60 days. I’ve become complacent and it’s not okay with me anymore. And every single day I ask loudly into the void “Can you please leave me alone and let me go back to the way it was before?! When I was just a doormat and my life was easy?! Please! I don’t want to do this anymore!” And the one thing that has not wavered this entire time is that every time I say something like that, I am shown that the answer to my question is NO, we cannot go back to the way it was before. That I have to keep going on this path, even if I’m kicking and screaming as I go.

I don’t see things in black and white. I see it all in color, or gray, depending on my mood. And I envy the people who can just see black or white. It must be really nice to be able to make decisions based on logic and facts without attaching any feelings to the decision or the outcome. If you’re like me and your heart, not your mind, guides you, we are pretty freakin’ hopeless, aren’t we? I wish that my heart and brain could agree with each other on literally anything. But it feels like there is this perpetual argument going on between them all day every day. It’s not that I don’t know how or have the ability to make logical decisions, it’s that the logical decisions don’t make sense to me. If it doesn’t feel right to me, it takes a lot of over thinking and convincing for me to make the correct choice.

I’ve been working in the shadows of myself. Figuring out triggers and why I react the way I do to certain people or things. It’s all buried in the depths of my soul and getting it out has been, you guessed it, uncomfortable. However, there are times throughout the day where I catch myself feeling some type of way about someone or something and I will actually stop and say out loud “STOP! Who fucking cares?! This does NOT matter!” And believe it or not, that helps a LOT. Because these stupid triggers, which I wasn’t even aware of, are insignificant to the person I’m trying to become. These are things that no longer serve me, and they’ve got to go. So taking a moment to stop them in their tracks has been really helpful. The point is to get to a place of response, not reaction.

The most uncomfortable thing about this whole journey has been realizing that I am the problem. The good news is that I’m also the solution. In this moment, I have no idea what will actually make me happy. Of course there are things in my life that bring happiness with them, and of course I’m grateful for those things. When I say “Happy”, I guess what I mean is what will ultimately get me to the point where being in this awful, negative headspace isn’t the norm. That the goal is to be content always, and when awful, negative stuff happens, it bothers me the correct way and I can feel it and then go back to being content. I’m tired of this end of the world feeling that I’ve got going on. That when good things happen to me, I’m afraid to embrace them because I’m waiting for the negative thing to swoop in and knock me on my ass. I self sabotage and ruin good things because I’m afraid of an outcome that I can’t predict. I don’t want to live like that anymore. There has to be a shift.

I know that I will never stop learning for as long as I live. I know that once I get to a good place there will always be more. I want to keep learning and growing, but getting to that good place where I feel like a whole person is the goal right now. Removing the negative feelings behind every single thing is my primary focus, it’s a poison and it’s unnecessary. And I promise you that I’m trying. I’m going to come out of this a better person, I just need a little more patience and perseverance, and most days I don’t even know where to find those things. I know that we are all a little broken, it’s what makes us beautiful in our own ways. I just need to keep working on healing the parts that can be healed. Anything beyond that will be a bonus.

If you made it to the end, as always, I appreciate you. Thanks for reading…

I wanna heal, I wanna feel what I thought was never real, I wanna let go of the pain I’ve felt so long, (erase all the pain ’til it’s gone), I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I’m close to something real, I wanna find something I’ve wanted all along, somewhere I belong…

Song name: SOMEWHERE I BELONG/ Artist: Linkin Park/ Year: 2003

sometimes I wonder if I should be medicated, if I would feel better just slightly sedated, a feeling comes so fast and I cannot control it, I’m on fire, but I’m trying not to show it… as it picks me up, puts me down, a hundred times a day…

Day 36…

36 days have passed since my whole world shifted. But who’s counting, right? Been doing a lot of work, not seeing instant results and so I’m frustrated. There are more dark days than light. I cherish the light days and try to carry them with me into the next day but it feels like I hold on to them so tight that I crush them. There are never 2 light days in a row. There are never 2 good sleep nights in a row. The only continuity in this journey is that nothing is continuous. Every day is just a clean slate and I never know what it will look like until I’m in it.

I’ve been working on a lot of things, but I still have these feelings of total confusion and uneasiness at all times. I have nothing to be anxious about currently. I am doing my best to stay present, not dwell in the past or look into the future beyond today. It’s almost like I’m holding someone else’s energy, which sounds absolutely bat shit crazy, I know. I know that I have a lot of unresolved shit bubbling to the surface, but I don’t feel bad when those things make their way out. It’s in those moments where I feel peace, even if it’s only for a moment. It feels nice. Again, I try to grasp onto it, but it’s only a moment. It passes and I go right back to feeling uneasy and out of sorts. And I’m saying that it’s not my energy because I am unfamiliar with these things that I’m feeling. I’ve been anxious my whole life, I know that that feels like. This shit that I’m feeling doesn’t feel like mine. And yes, I’m aware of how crazy that sounds…

Yesterday started off really great. I got to step out of my mind at an art exhibit. It’s nice to sit and enjoy something that takes over the majority of your senses and quiets the internal chaos. And I’ve been trying to do more things like that because they bring me peace. By the time the afternoon had rolled around, everything I experienced earlier in the day felt like a very distant memory. I kept trying to remind myself what it felt like and that I took videos of my favorite parts so that I could go there whenever I wanted to. But the problem is, when I get these really weird feelings, I freeze. It’s almost like I forget how to just be. Everything feels wrong and the desire to make it right is nonexistent.

I was going to visit with my grandmother and I remember saying, out loud in my car before I got out, “Please leave me alone while I visit my grandmother. Please just give me 30 minutes of peace.” I was not granted 30 minutes of peace, maybe 5, tops. When I got home I did my best to keep those weird feelings at bay. I spent time with my husband and puppy and watched shows and talked about things that made me happy. As much as I try to get away from this whole thing and proclaim, with the utmost confidence, that I am done and that I don’t want to be on this journey anymore, the universe always manages to send me signs to keep going. I feel gratitude and resentment at the same time.

There is still so much I need to fix and I’m exhausted. I gave myself one goal this past weekend: to find a tiny box where I kept my most important jewelry. I have been periodically looking for it for months and trying not to freak out about it, I knew it was in my house somewhere. I hid it too well I guess. Anyway, Saturday hit the peak of “absolutely freak out about it mode” and I was inconsolable. My husband didn’t know how to help me. I was furious with myself for being so mixed up lately that I couldn’t remember where I hid a box that had my grandmother’s ring in it. I gave up and sat in the living room feeling sorry for myself. My husband called me into the bedroom a few minutes later. Poor guy, I don’t know how he deals with me. But he looked in the one spot I didn’t think to look and found the box. And I immediately hugged him and broke down in happy tears. And the reason why I put it there came back to me immediately and I felt so stupid that I let myself spiral the way I did. I got to the point where I was freaking out so much that I couldn’t even think straight. Thank God my husband still had his wits about him and saved the day.

It’s hard for me to put into words all the shit that I’m going through. And I’m sorry that these posts have been a little cuckoo bananas lately. It’s more than I can handle right now, but somehow I’m handling it. And I have no idea if I’m even doing the right things but I’m doing my best. There is still so much that I don’t understand. Some days I’m really eager to learn, and other days I feel like I’ll never be able to move forward. Everything still feels so unstable and I just want some clarity. I have to trust that if I keep doing the work, it will come. It still feels so selfish to me to take time and take care of myself, but it also feels like I don’t have a choice. Every time I try to ignore it, it pulls me back in.

I am trying to walk through this thing with as much grace as possible. I’m trying so hard to get to the bottom of it so that I can stop feeling this way. This is some soul level shit that I’ve never dealt with before and I’m just trying to deal with it as gracefully as possible. I know this is a very weird and different thing for most people to understand, so I don’t want to scare anyone away. And I really do appreciate the amount of support that I’ve gotten during this time. I don’t know how much longer this will go on, but I don’t want wear out my welcome so I mostly keep to myself about all of it.

Anyway, I’m good, I promise. I hate this journey right now but I’m grateful for it. I know that it’s leading me to be the best version of myself and that I need to approach it with more patience. I will get there. If you made it to the end, I appreciate it very much. If you don’t mind coming along for this wild ride, I’m happy to share it…

but I hear the music, I feel the beat, and for a moment, when I’m dancing, I am free…

Song name: FREE/ Artist: Florence + the Machine/ Year: 2022