I’m trying to get back into a routine. I can’t have my old one and need a new one but want my old one.
Since the whole world shut down and my dad died then my brother in law died I have to find a life that doesn’t include them and doesn’t include most of the things I once did. But some are starting to slowly get back to a new normal. I am just not adjusting to it. I like my old normal not new normal. What is new normal? It is not normal at all. It is abnormal. New normal is abnormal. unusual. Uncomfortable.
I am trying to get back to writing again daily. The thought that I don’t need to write was replaced with the thought that I was doing well enough that I didn’t need to write daily, then replaced with the thought that I am avoiding writing to avoid writing daily. I stopped to avoid not because I am so grounded and resolved that o have nothing to write out. Nothing to see. I am too afraid to see it.
I bother myself. I was told I bothered someone for years. So in my mind I bother everyone. But really I bother me. I’m a lot for myself. I exhaust myself. I don’t wear myself out. I have tried. I have tried to exhaust myself to the point of exhaustion that I hope will resolve the bothersome thoughts. The feeling I bother others. I haven’t heard it for years. In fact I’ve heard the opposite. That I don’t bother him. That he liked my energy. How could he? Even I don’t. I see it and feel it but can’t accept it. I’ve been trying to find calm. Hoping I will attract calm when I can’t attract what I am not.
If you love someone set them free? This thought comes and goes with me right now. I’m trying to set love free? Why? I want to hang onto love. Not set it free. Why would we. Can’t we keep it forever. I loved him once and it isn’t gone? Is it? Was it not love? I only really know what love is not so love is is difficult to feel from others. I can give it? Can’t I? Am I giving or wrong? Too much! Not enough?
I don’t want to think about love. I have someone I love. I am certain and have been for years. It is just am unusual love. One I don’t recognize. It was self love. I let it go. I stopped loving me out of confusion of needing love from others. To fill the void of less love from my dad dying. The last few months have been like a dream. A nightmare if I really think of it. But a hazy one. I woke in the night from a nightmare feeling like I finally have time to sit with myself again. Or that I want to. It’s the hardest thing I know to avoid to not do. It’s almost too hard to sit with my thoughts. Torture for me would be to have to sit. Alone. For a few hours. Torture yet also not. When I don’t want to do it is when I know that I should the most. Just sit. Not be so not sitting all the time. I don’t mean physically sit. Although that’s when it is the hardest but just to be completely alone with my thoughts. No distractions. Think of whatever comes to mind and allow it to be thought. I have to work harder than most people to focus. I’m easily distracted specifically because of the fear I have of the thoughts I am avoiding. Feeling things. Remembering and thinking of things I’ve spent years keeping from surfacing. The brain is fascinating. For years it protected me by allowing some things to just not be remembered. Then slowly they started coming at me little and sometimes they came like a train. Fast and furious. But the brain knew what it knew that I didn’t know. My brain seems to work independently of myself.
I think a lot of my anxiety is in my feet. They do a lot of my walking and work. Almost all of my work. And one is bigger than the other. An entire size. It is difficult to find peace in my foot from foot store rules not letting you mix and match sizes. I have bought two sizes and just done it myself. I buy shoes like some buy what? Not toilet paper but someone who buys things a lot. If my left toe is cramped it’s style is cramped and it makes my entire body anxious. Making my mind anxious. I wore shoes with individual toes. It was so weird I can barely describe it. All my toes seemed to have a mind of their own. They seemed to work independently of each other. Not all cramped up together. They were less of a team. But more like a relay race. Most important the big toe was free. It was comfortable with himself for once. Less pressure and pain. More miles he said. My toes don’t actually talk but they speak real loud when they hurt. I walk miles. Hundreds. Not just a few but sitting with myself is too hard so I walk with myself to sit with myself. Miles. Hundreds of them. So toe anxiety is a real thing. Less anxious feet less anxious brain less anxious me. More comfortable sitting. But walking.
I had no idea what I would think this morning no way did I think it would be about toes. I dreamt I was witnessing a man being buried alive by a backhoe. I woke in fear of being buried alive. I never found sleep again. I have been sleeping so much that a few days of not sleeping has made me a little more awake. Back to my normal. My abnormal. Back to square one. Self love. The more I do on my own the more I see I don’t need someone. I want someone. I have been manifesting to thé universe and getting frustrated that it’s not giving me what I want. Because it knows better. It knows I am not ready or not knows I don’t need it or it knows what it knows that I don’t get to know until it is known. Why?
I was manifesting the desire to be held, comforted, loved and not forgotten. To have someone’s shirt to ware to smell and feel wrapped up in a tight hug when I don’t even like to be wrapped up in tight hugs. I panic at the thought of being held. Why would they hold me? What if I can’t breath? What will I think of when being held? I would hold my breath? I would worry I’m not doing it right? I would worry I am being held and not holding back. I wanted to just be with someone else so I didn’t have to be with myself. Because that was too hard. My dad died and no way was I going to be able to do this alone.
Alone? I spent years undoing the thought that on my own means alone. Alone is a feeling of being lonely. On my own. I can move this piano on my own. I didn’t want to move it. There has always been a piano. I avoided it for weeks. My mom is ready for there to not always being a piano. Ready to move forward with no piano. I am just not. The piano is moved and I moved it with my son on our own. We didn’t need someone to move it for us. I wasn’t alone. I didn’t feel alone. I felt I did it on my own. Even though someone else was there. It is just a more empowering thought to have. To be on my own. Even with someone there I am still on my own. I’ve been the loneliest I’ve ever been while being in company of others. And felt the most not lonely completely alone and on my own. I keep company with myself quit well and my grief made me think I was not who I really am. My losses made me feel like I was someone I am not. Made me feel like I was a certain way. And I was. I am who I am and not what I’ve been through.
Grief has been a weird process for me to get through. It has felt like a loop. Like I started and went through the woods and came right back to the beginning and not an end. It can feel like waves but being so afraid of the ocean I can’t really relate anything to waves. I haven’t been in them. I want to be. But I don’t know what it’s like to be in a wave or feel waves. I know loops. My mind works in loops. Her and back to here. I don’t see the same thing twice this way. That’s how I like to hike. To come out in a big circle through. I don’t like just ending somewhere and turning around to come back. It’s such familier territory.
My kids and I are not adjusting to remote learning. My youngest is slowly but I can’t help her with much since I am not adjusting. We do math. First grade math and algebra. It’s funny how it came back to me like I’ve been doing math all my life which I have. But algebra? How did I blurt out how to do distributive properties like I’ve been doing them daily? Where did that come from? I didn’t get it when I did it and was told my alphabet was coming along for the ride with my numbers. I don’t use algebra for anything except now to do it with my son who won’t use it for anything except the same thing unless he teaches algebra. Or moves forward to more difficult math to become like an engineer. But yet it still isn’t really used? Is it? Are all of our buildings designed, engineered, and built with algebra? Everything makes sense because we solved and found X? Everything works because of letters and numbers? Algebra is what? A building block to something bigger? My son asks me, what about the a? What do I do with it? I say, it’s just along for the ride, move it down with his number. It isn’t adding or subtracting or multiplying at all just kind of there. Because I don’t know and will never know why. But math, math we can just do. It adds up. It makes sense and it doesn’t make sense. But it can be done and turned in. My kids will be great at math and self care. They may be engineers or maybe they will just be growers like me. Growing through grief.
Aspenleaf 