I thought I hit send last night on the blog I wrote about my day yesterday, but I didn’t so you’ll get 2 blogs this morning.
Why can’t our brains just let us rest or be at peace or enjoy the moment? I wrote yesterday about feeling accomplished and then I tossed and turned all night worrying about the tiny house on the road, dreaming about friends I haven’t talked to in a long time, and being woken up by Leo who is trying to learn to pee in the toilet at night but always wakes up a bit too late. I had heavy palpable anxiety throughout the night about the tiny house like the first time we moved one. The first time we moved one I didn’t sleep at all, because Israel was with the house, so I was more worried about him than anything, but even without a loved one en route, it’s still nerve wracking. Someone’s actual house is traveling 2400 miles in our care.
When I was finally able to sleep last night, my alarm woke me up at 5:30am and I was pissed. Not just slightly annoyed at getting out of bed, but enraged at all the things still looming. I got up an hour later because I just couldn’t bear it.
In a recent episode of Armchair Expert, Monica Padman talks about how seeing creepy crawling things like maggots make her feel like she cannot handle this world. I feel that way all the time, but not about worms or spiders, but just about the heavy load to juggle every single day. I feel like I can’t handle this life.
Even though I know I can, as seen in my post about yesterday. I am handling it, and probably pretty well. But the survivor instinct or lizard brain or whatever unevolved human system I still possess, has me living in fear. Are we really just cave people after all?
We need all sorts of mechanisms just to get us down from that wretched state of anxiety - do breathing exercises, think about all your senses, do yoga, keep a journal, rest more, go for a walk, laugh more. The burden of self care is even too much.
But here I am writing to you, my voluntarily therapists as I work this out, so thanks for listening. The one thing that does help me is to reflect on what’s real. What can I be happy about, grateful for, and proud of? So much. At the end of the day, I’m just a cave woman looking for her next meal except with a lot more on my list of responsibilities than my ancestors had. It sucks to be in a constant state of panic, but what can I say? I inherited it, and so did you. Some people have to fight inherited addictions or bad habits, but we all have to fight the instinct to just survive.
We’re so far passed that, so we might as well start living like we actually want to enjoy everything this life has to offer.