On the one hand, it's been incredible. Being back to work full-time at a company that wanted me to be there, working with people I got along with right off the bat and we work well together, in a part of the world I wasn't entirely sure I'd ever see again, let alone live in...?
After three years of either living in the back of a jeep or sleeping in some friends' basement, I'm able to sit down and write this out in the middle of my own apartment, with all my stuff around me and a comfortable bed waiting for me to fall into in a little while.
I'll wake up tomorrow and go to the gym, knowing I get paid Thursday, so I can take care of some more bills, and I feel like a more functional human being than I have in a really long time.
I genuinely couldn't have asked for a better situation to fall into my lap...and I guess that's the biggest problem I have at the moment.
Having been down this road before so many times, with the possibility that my life could finally be heading on a seemingly permanent upward trajectory, I'm waiting for someone or something to poke a hole in the surreal balloon I've been floating in since I got here and the inevitable plummet back to the harsh reality I've grown way too accustomed to.
And that it hasn't happened already is more than a little terrifying, if I'm honest.
To counterbalance that anxiety as best I can, I've been working every day to find something that I can feel some degree of happiness about. It doesn't have to be anything particularly revelatory or epiphanic, either. On Friday, for example, I found myself feeling kind of happy because a brand new set of Tupperware I'd ordered arrived.
Editorial Note: Seriously, if that's the sort of thing you're finding any measure of happiness or joy in, then you are very much refilling a tank where the gauge is reading waaaaaaay past E.
Still, for every one of those moments, I have others that are harder to navigate. Where my Depression and anxiety kick in and remind me of how fragile a position I'm still in. That at any second, it could all go away like SO many other times before now and that getting comfortable or anywhere near close to complacent would be both short-sighted and incredibly stupid.
Because of that, I've been operating at a more elevated pace than I have in a while, as well.
Being able to wait for things to come about organically is not something I'm much in the mood for right now. The motivation is there to go do everything and buy everything and make sure I have as solid a foundation under me as humanly possible, so I don't lie in bed at night freaking out about when the rug is going to get pulled out from underneath me.
Which is what happens when you've spent so long just trying to survive situations you couldn't have anticipated before they became unavoidable traps you couldn't get clear of in time. Then when you did get out it and found yourself in the friendly confines of being around people who care about you again, the idea of stepping back out into the world alone without that safety net is more than a little daunting.
Some mornings, I wake up and it feels like a year has gone by, instead of a month, and that most of that time went by so fast that I somehow squandered it.
Downshifting is hard, because sometimes it feels like backsliding. When you're wanting nothing more than to get your life in a forward-moving direction again, the absolute last thing you want is to have to slam the brakes and come to a screeching halt.
Or worse still, to have to throw it back in reverse.
But so far, I've managed to make it through the first month in one piece. I can't say the same entirely for my jeep, but at least I'm in a position where we both can get some of the attention we need to be as close to 100 percent as we can manage.
With luck, he'll be in the shop next month and I'll be in a doctor's office starting to get my own physical and emotional dings worked out. My Depression and anxiety are having a field day with that as well, trying to remind me that it didn't really help any before and it's probably not going to help now.
They've also been reminding me of just what it is I'm needing to have fixed — That I need to stop caring about people so much and letting them care about me to any degree of equal measure.
Why? Because it hurts too much. Simple as that.
There is a part of me that wasn't there before the Breakdown, the Divorce and the Ghost, that is convinced that the only way I'm ever going to feel anywhere near the outskirts of better is to have a psychological professional teach me how best to permanently unhook that other part of me...or otherwise convince a medical professional how imperative it is that it be physically removed by whatever means necessary including, but not limited to, the use of a grapefruit spoon.
For now, though, I'm just trying to ride the waves and tread water as best I can. Tomorrow may be another pretty easy one like today was, or it may be an absolute shitshow. I have no idea. Wish I did, but IO suppose that would spoil the surprise, I guess.
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