A Place I’ve Never Been Before

 I sat with discomfort this morning.

I could feel my body shaking inside.

I was uncomfortable.

Very uncomfortable.

I had made a decision.

Fear was no longer going to run my life.

I expected fear to fight back.

Fear has been with me for a very long time, and I know it doesn’t give up easily.

But neither do I.

What I didn’t expect was what came next.

Restlessness.

I can find something to accomplish.

Something to create.

Something to look forward to.

I’ve always been able to give myself momentum.

But today, I felt restless.

And I realized something.

Restlessness can actually feel painful too. 

I think what I’m experiencing is bigger than restlessness.

I’m used to being motivated by doing.

Doing something gives me somewhere to go.

A craft gives me something to focus on.

A trip to the grocery store gives me a destination.

For most of my life, there has been something to do.

Something to fix.

Someone to help.

Something to accomplish.

And now I feel like I’ve landed somewhere I’ve never been before.

And I don’t like how it feels.

Maybe that’s because I’ve spent so much of my life knowing how to fill the space.

I know how to distract myself.

I know how to help someone else.

I know how to solve a problem.

But what do I do with space?

What do I do with uncertainty?

What do I do when there isn’t something that needs to be fixed right this minute?

I don’t know.

And I think that’s the part that is so uncomfortable.

No More Places to Hide

 When I look back at my life,

I can see all the creative ways

I learned to avoid the things

I didn’t know what to do with.

Before recovery,

I hid my feelings of unworthiness

by helping other people.

I threw myself into creative projects.

I excelled in my career.

From the outside,

I probably looked like I had it all together.

But I knew how I felt about myself.

Others didn’t.

I carried a tremendous amount of shame,

but I became very good at hiding it.

Helping people gave me purpose.

Creating gave me somewhere to go.

Work gave me something to accomplish.

And all of it kept me busy enough

that I didn’t have to look too closely

at the emptiness inside.

It looked like I had a charmed life.

But appearances can be deceiving.

Inside, I felt empty.

For a long time,

I thought I was simply being productive.

Now I can see

that some of it was survival.

I had learned how to build beautiful places

to hide in.

But eventually,

there came a time when

there were no more places to hide.

Recovery began to turn the lights on.

And once the lights were on,

I had to see myself.

The shame.

The fear.

The unworthiness.

The little girl who had been waiting

to be found.

It wasn’t easy.

But perhaps that was the beginning

of becoming whole.

Because you can’t heal

what you keep hiding from.

And today,

I don’t want any more places to hide.

I want to know myself.

All of me.

And finally learn

that I don’t have to accomplish,

create, or rescue my way

into being worthy of love.

I already am.

Hitting Rock Bottom

 Sometimes we can’t rise

Until we’ve exhausted every resource.

Until we feel chewed and spit out.

At least, that’s true for me.

I can’t count the times

I’ve tried everything I know. I can be determined/hardheaded.

But eventually,

there comes a moment

when there is nowhere left to look.

Nothing left to try.

No more answers to find.

And that’s usually when I surrender.

I’ve learned that surrender isn’t failure.

It isn’t giving up.

Sometimes surrender is finally admitting that I don’t have to figure everything out.

I don’t have to control the outcome.

I don’t have to find the answer.

I can simply let go.

And strangely enough,

surrender always seems to be

the right answer.