I was able to go back to therapy. I thought I was just done since she was opening her own practice. I don’t think I will ever be done. Out of the blue she messages me and asks me for my same time slot back. She knows I will never be done. It came right when I needed it. When I feel stuck and lost. Like a rat in a maze? A person in a corn maze? A mouse in a maze?
But. Like some things do. The universe looks out for me?
It was too hard to get through my sisters husbands funeral. I made it through but I didn’t. I was sent a small video from a friend I’ve made through the inter webs of him driving through Colorado and seeing all of the Aspen trees and just thinking of me. He knows how much I love them. He is one of my distant friends. By miles. We met in my store originally and just immediately connected. I knew he had pain. I picked up on it from the first day I met him and his wife. They were adorable yet to me it seemed wrong and off. Out of balance. They were adorable separately but together they didn’t add up. Then he came in one day alone. His face tear stained and red. He was buying lots of plants for clearly lots of pain. I said nothing. Just sent him on. Then didn’t see him for months. Then connected on our Instagram page. Then we started talking. Then we opened up about our pain. Then we connected forever. He no longer had this wife and he knew a wife wasn’t what was for him for years and finally was able to fully be himself and recognize not to be afraid of himself. I adore him and his courage to be who he is. I find simple strength sometimes just by thinking of his pain. So weird right? I find comfort in your pain? I found peace knowing you also suffered? Yet, he did me too? Misery likes company?
My other friend is back to trying to online meet. Once when I tried it one of the questions was why I was online dating? I said to learn who I am through others. I never answered the questions right. Sometimes I even asked a question back to the question. Sometimes I was intentionally difficult to try to…to what? Be intentionally difficult? Show that I am difficult? Why? So no one will ever want to meet me? Or to show that sometimes I am just intentionally difficult? Either way no one ever wanted to meet me intentionally. No one seemed to be on there to actually meet anyone. Just look and kill time maybe? I did learn more about me than any single person on there. Or out there.
I need a hike. A good get lost kind. Not a small little 2 mile clear marked and simple path that has no way of being fucked up. A 20 mile loop that has turns not marked, some terrain and some confusion so I can mess the whole thing up and still come out alive. That kind of hike. The kind that makes me feel like I almost didn’t make it. I’ve created chaos all on my own that I need to uncreate. I have a 20 year old child who has messed with me enough I doubt who I am. An ex who has made me once again doubt who I am. A friend I can’t predict. A friend I miss. A solid pyramid base to move up to my next level of I don’t want to do this all on my own forever. Why did she use pyramids? She is right though. I have a foundation. A place to build from. So what’s next and how? Stuck in the corner of a maze for some reason.
I keep thinking about how when you boil eggs they get hard but when you boil potatoes they get soft. It makes no sense to me. Science is just cool? That’s why? That’s the answer I was given. We don’t really know or we do and I just don’t? It’s what they are made of. It depends on what you are made of how you will come out? Soft or hard? Like potatoes and eggs. We make a salad with both. They just both come out different. Some of us just come out harder after being boiled? Making it a metaphor for life isn’t working without thinking of boiling baby chickens and people. Then I can’t eat boiled eggs after thinking of people and chickens being boiled. it’s just a saying. It’s just boiled food. It’s just too much for me to make sense of. Who decides to boil an egg? Why? Who first boiled a chicken and thought, I will rip all the feathers from this animal and then boil it and rip it off it’s bones and then eat it? Why? I’m not a vegetarian it’s literally just birds. Birds can’t be unthought of for me to be eaten. In any form. Unless in salad and done fast and I don’t think about birds. Which is hard to do when you are eating a bird.
This is really the first difficult to impossible thing I’ve been through all on my own. My dad dying. Not alone but without medications, a tip toe into alcohol, and a controlling individual who told me how to or not to feel. This is all me and all my new found coping skills. I don’t even have an addiction to get me through this all? Because I know I could? So I don’t. I just have me and my woods. That’s how I get through. By getting out and through. I need a good maze. Like a little mouse or rat in a maze. I need a corn maze? Straw maze? I want to get to little corners and places that I will get pissed off and frustrated. Like I am right now. I can’t get out and turn around and find another one that I also can’t get out of. Then another. Then I want to sit and feel like I want to give up like I am right now. and think about giving up and just sitting there until what? I die? I’m killed? I fall asleep forever? I tell myself how silly it is to give up? I tell myself finally I am resting not giving up? Then I don’t give up because I don’t give up. I also don’t want to die or be killed in the woods a corn maze or a straw maze. I don’t want to fall asleep forever or I will be chased in my sleep forever. I want to keep going. And do it all over again. Give up but never give up. So I can get out.
I can only imagine what a rat thinks in a maze. Maybe not a corn maze but the ones that scientists use to watch mice and rats in mazes. Why? To see what? How we get out of things? How they do? Are our brains closely related to a rat or mouse? I don’t know which one they use? Who said let’s see what this rat does when we try to make him give up? Let’s watch this rat struggle. We do it to people with corn and straw mazes. Let’s see who can get out. I’m stuck in a corn maze today.
I ate my finger nails all the way off. It’s just an option of trimming that I tend to do when I get to anxious. Down to skin and even beyond skin. I can cut them and have been for a few years but occasionally I sit and can’t sit and then I eat my nails. Why do some of us chew off our nails? I do because I am haunted by bird eating anxiety and nightmares of bird eating anxiety and being chased and murdered in my sleep that feels like being chased in my wake. I get nightmares like a child still as an adult. For no good reason. Awake I’m thinking of what happened in my sleep. On top of what is happening in my wake. They are all mixed up from not actually being able to sleep some nights but when I do there are birds and exhausting chases to stay alive. Then I wake exhausted from staying alive in my sleep. While I’m awake. I’m exhausted from imaginary things. Why do some of us get nightmares as grown ups? I don’t have a super traumatic past to make me nightmare of being chased. I am just always being chased. My face was swollen last night in my chase in my sleep/ Not like I was beat up but like an allergic reaction. I couldn’t breath and woke in a sweat and panic. I fell from bed. All the way to the ground. I feel like I need a railing on my bed as much as I fall from bed as an adult.
Is it the few weeks I went with out therapy. I have to talk to someone for one full hour about whatever I want or I will have nightmares? Is it that I haven’t hiked properly to undo the chaos I created all on my own? Is it the anxiety of preparing for remote learning that will not work and my kids will never benefit from because they are hands on learners? Is it the anxiety of meeting someone who I am learning things from and they take my hand to help me through things? Is it the next pyramid level? Is it the dead turtles floating in my tank from being captured to keep? Is it the birds I’m eating? Is it the dead bug? The baby deer from years ago that had a broken leg and I know never made it but no way I could carry it miles to my car and then what? 9 hours in my car back to my state to what? Live? Is it my dad being gone? He hasn’t always been gone and I’ve always had nightmares. I’ve never been chased. Or almost murdered. That I know of. So why do I get them when I’m trying to rest. Because I can’t rest. I’m unrested. In a corn maze.
Aspenleaf 