Big Feels on Not Stopping:
I have a former therapist who told me, “Be in the flow of the river you are in right now.”
I am not in the flow. I don’t want to be. The flow of my river is stupid.
Every tarot card reader and astrology app and dear friend and my own wisdom tells me: focus on your art, your writing, your own self.
I’m so bored by my own self. I don’t want to focus on me.
Still, I do the things I’m meant to do. Still, I make new little goals, here and there. I’ve decided I’m going to start attending open mic’s to read my poetry out loud. Get myself out there. Feel the sexual energy of a crowd. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll hate it.*
I have a new therapist and I was telling her about how everything feels impossible. I’m so tired and have no memory and sometimes I’m so sad I wonder if anyone has ever been this sad or if it’s just me (lol, yolo). I hate how this me, this deeply depleted me, feels like a stranger. I can’t even go to the grocery store without pulling myself apart limb from limb. I told her, “I can’t stop. I can’t. I have things to do and real deadlines I can’t miss.”
She said, “No, you’re not going to stop.”
I thought she was going to tell me to stop.
But she said, No. Not now. “You might not start again if you stop now.”
So instead I am automating everything I can in my life, psychologist’s orders. I am meal planning and I am setting my clothes out all at once for the whole week. She says, “Don’t think about whether you want to eat the food you made, whether you feel like it — that’s another decision you don’t have energy for. You just eat the food, follow the plan, keep moving.”
It’s helping. I do feel like it’s helping. I like how no-nonsense she is about how bad it has been and exactly how we’re going to put one foot in front of the other. My other therapists have been poets, this one is a war correspondent. My therapist is in the trenches, she’s grabbing me by the collar and pulling me up onto gangrene legs, “KEEP MARCHING, SOLDIER.”
I told her that I think my year is catching up with me, that I’m finally feeling it all. She glances down at the sheet of paper with all the notes from the personal history I’d given her last session, then looks back up at me, deadpan, “I think your whole life is catching up with you.”
I guess I just have to feel it. I made myself a little jingle. I sing to myself, “She’s the saddest girl in the woooooorld!” when I’m feeling extra depresso. It makes me smile for a second at least.
There is a part of me that’s like, “How am I still upright….and literally whyyyy?” At this point my resiliency is getting on my nerves. Other people quit! They quit all the time! Why the hell am I still putting one foot in front of the other?
A man at the library got logged off his computer yesterday. He probably ran out of time, and didn’t realize it. He told me he didn’t know why they were targeting him, why they were logging him off the computer when he had one simple thing to do. I assured him that we were not targeting him, that I really wanted to help him get on the computer and could do that right now. He said, “No, not you, there is an evil out to get me, I don’t know why. They are making everything inconvenient. Why would they bother with me? Why make my life harder? I only need the computer for six minutes.”
I couldn’t argue with him. Who was I to say there wasn’t a bigger evil. I feel it too. I feel it all the time. I told him, “Well, at least I got to meet you, that’s some good that came out of today, right?” He laughed, he said, “It’s everything, it’s all the time. It will keep happening.”
My therapist is right that I can’t stop. And I know there is a gift in that I am prone to moving forward. I guess nothing is ever good enough. If I’m going to be sad, I must be the saddest girl in the world. If I am going to keep moving forward, I want to be running full tilt, legs burning, the taste of blood in my throat. I am the saddest girl in the world moving as fast as she can, and I wish it was faster, and I wish I was either more or less sad. ;)
This year has been a lot for me. It’s everything, it’s all the time. It just keeps fucking happening.
Today I talked to my sister on the phone. I told her all my woes and shenanigans. She told me she wished I would slow down on the shenanigans. I told her I knew she was probably and most likely right, but I didn’t want to. I will try, okay? But I can’t promise anything. I want to feel alive, okay? I hung up the phone and walked down to the water. I sat by the river for a long, long time. I heard nothing. Thought, nothing. I got up and started walking again. Then I heard it:
We want to give you peace. Let us.
Fuck. I do not know what it is to have peace for peace’s sake. I only know peace in spite of something else. I know how to overcome, to walk up a steep hill; I do not know how to keep a straight line on a flat road.
I want to be dead or I want to be so alive that my hair is on fire.
The earth is asking me to be somewhere in-between for awhile. Be sad, keep moving, accept help and all the love, finish your projects, drink some wine, go to therapy, stay off Bumble, have a sleepover with your friend, eat tater tots.
I will try to be in flow, even though it feels stupid. I will try, okay?
Talk soon,
Natahna
*I did the open mic and I did not hate it. ;)
The Recommends: Listening to your sister. And also listening to the album Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens while you heave-cry.
I love this so much!! I've had an incredibly shitty year as well and I also have had moments where I want to be dead or so alive my hair is on fire. Putting one foot in front of the other just to keep moving. Tired of other people's advice sometimes when they aren't standing in my shoes and don't know that if I do what they'll say I won't survive. My therapist has told me I don't need to give people answers for the incessant questions they ask me, she's told me I can say, "I don't f*cking know right now." I think our therapists would be good friends.
Thank you for sharing. It's nice to not feel alone in the hellscape.
I laughed so much at the war correspondent bit. I’m so glad you have her in the trenches with you 💜 I love you so much and hope everything eases soon