My lot in life and other whingings

I’m sitting at work watching Felicity on Netflix. It’s a blast from the past and a bit of nostalgia, but also a bit of procrastination. For writing. For working. For my life. 

I’ve had a great year and a bad one rolled into one, all packaged up in multi-layered wrapping paper. With a big, fucking bow. You see, it all looks nice and bright and festive on the outside. A big smile plastered all over it. On the inside, it’s dark, dank and it’s where my secrets live. My secret fears, my insecurities and the things that I pack away, stuff away from the light of day hoping it would all go away.

It doesn’t. It festers and weeps and gets into crevices that even a broom, a pick axe can’t get loose. I’m lost in my psyche, in my past, in all of my perceived failures, and because I don’t see the light of day – my true self – I’m stuck with pleasing others and creating a front of what I think everyone else thinks I should do or be.

It’s not a new thing. I’ve done it all my life and I got really good at it. Or so I thought.  But it manifested in procrastination. In sleeping. In shirking responsibilities. In not applying for some jobs because I didn’t think I could do the job. Of not being hired anyways. Why bother when I’d only fail in the end. Because I’m not good enough, not deserving enough. It was status quo. 

It can no longer be status quo. While this past year was boundary pushing, it pushed too hard for my own comfort and I pushed back. By doing nothing. By keeping the status quo in the forefront and not working on the things I needed to. The scary things in the corner of my box.

It’s been two full weeks since the bomb, and now I’m dealing with the fallout. The fallout is huge.  Life-changing and scary as shit. So scary that it’s tempting to put my head back in the sand and pretend everything is fine. I can’t because it’s not.

I’m not fine. I’m swimming against the tide with no way to know where to find the water’s surface. It’s like drowning but without the water. I used to say that I rarely cried. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t shed tears. Over Scott. Over me. Over my faults and what they’ve brought into my life. Over my basement leak. Over my parents who still think they’re not the interfering kind and my inability to set real, impenetrable boundaries without cutting complete contact with them.

I’m trying to go for counseling. The crazy doctor. Actual psychoanalysis to help me cope. My immediate concern is selling my house, finding a new one and keeping my financial head afloat while I try to figure out my actual one. I’m scared, I’m confused and swimming upstream despite the odds. It’s time I love myself again, not because I’m supposed to but because I’m worth it. I have to figure out how to measure that worth and hold onto it despite what my inner demons continue to tell me.

I wish me much luck.