Back home

   There is a quote that goes: "You can't heal in the same place you got sick", and, of course, it's everyone's dream to be able to leave and not look back. In fact, so many do. In today’s world it’s very easy to escape into another realm, another reality, another relationship or another country. In that movement we do find release, sometimes temporary reprieve, but always temporary. At some point we must come home. By “home” I don’t mean the actually physical place, but the home inside of us where we have to revisit it all, the good and the bad, the unspoken, the monsters and ghosts.

    

Upon returning, we feel it all like it was never gone. In fact, sometimes it all comes back with multiplied force, and it overwhelms us. Some people chose to live their whole lives on the run, and they can manage it, but for most of us it’s just not feasible. We have two choices: To sulk and be angry and retreat into ourselves, or to accept reality for what it is with grace and patience. In order to accept, we must learn to make space for our grief and sadness when it arises and also learn to make space for love and joy when they revisit.

   

Recently, I have come home. It didn’t have a choice; it was just my reality. In coming home, I have to face it all again. I imagine I feel like people who come out of rehab and have to use their coping mechanisms to stay sober and build a healthy life. Some wounds reopen, memories return, small anxiety attacks spike within me and I have moments of despair. I return to my young self needing to be rescued and praying for a savior, when in fact, I am the adult who needs to soothe and rescue myself. That is part of my coping skills, calming the inner child and reminding her that we’ve been through so much and we will be ok.

    

   I think we can’t be too strict with ourselves and our dogmas. If I believe that quote, it means I’m doomed to be sick forever. Maybe it is harder in the same place, however, there are other ways to create space to continue healing. Maybe the place is my inner world and I can continue working on making it a wonderful place to be, in teaching my thoughts to be kinder, and in having compassion for the cortisol levels that spike my morning anxiety. I am not good at playing the “glad game” so I won’t force it on me, but I can make small future plans to have things to look forward to to keep me going one day at a time.

    

   I know this is also temporary. Everything is temporary. Even home, is not the same home I left, and be being so it’s a different place. I can heal in a different place. I am not the same person. I honestly don’t even know what “healing” means anymore. It feels like so much pressure to be always healing. Maybe I’ll rephrase it. 

    

   I can live here, I can breathe here, I can hope here, I can love here, I can trust here, and I can just be. It’s my only job right now.       

End and Beginnings

     Someone with an unsettled mind has a very difficult time with change, because it usually means that something that was safe - or seemed safe enough - is changing and something dangerous is waiting around the river bend. It sounds a bit crazy, but an unsettled mind is relatively insane, either because of real trauma, a mental illness or just the way one was born. And don't judge, after all, there is real danger in the world and tragedy finds us all at one point or another. However, living in preparation for tragedy is no life at all. 

    It's a funny concept trying to avoid change in order to make one's life safe, after all, change is the only constant in life. Even if we are sitting still, everything is changing around us, and the person who sits down is not the same person who stands up. We are all always changing and morphing and just growing older. Still, an unsettled mind tries their best to control possible catastrophe and pain by holding on to anything that feels safe. But even a strong branch may break if you hold on to it for too long, and once more you are adrift in the river of life. 

   Recently, after struggling for years to maintain safety and security, that last branch broke off and I didn't fight the river anymore. Sometimes I was terrified and thought I was going to drown, but mostly I was mesmerized at so much world I was missing out on by trying to stay in the same place. And, although there is always danger, most of it was ilusory. The river seemed to be taking me straight onto a rock, but would gently change its course causing me to laugh with excitement at the thrill of it all. Learning new skills caused me panic at first - that desire to curl into a ball and hide - but once I crossed that line I realized that I was more capable than I thought I was and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Or maybe it was, but I had it in me all along to learn. 

   It's hard to rewire a brain to welcome change as new experiences. An ending is automatically a start. It's simply an empty vacuum that new life will flow into, and whatever it is, I can handle it. I can handle any possible danger, but mostly, I can handle all the novelty of not knowing. I don't need that branch anymore because my home is the river and I am the water. 

   One of my favorite quotes these days is: "Embrace the panic of having the rest of your life ahead of you." I am halfway through my life. If I'm going to finish with a positive, yet realistic, note, I would say this. The benefit of having had such a crappy childhood and so much sorrow in the past is that happiness in the present just feels so amazingly foreign, like tasting an exotic drink. The good thing about not peaking in your youth, is that you are constantly peaking and life is always getting better. The fact that I didn't get to have extraordinary life experiences in the past means that they are still ahead of me and I look forward to all of them. 

   I am less afraid of change. If I was not afraid at all, I wouldn't be human. If I wasn't a little bit terrified, I wouldn't have the amazing unsettled mind that I have ... which I have grown to love.