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Elysium · Sep 16, 2010, 10:24 PM

Ooomph!!!!

I wasn't real sure where the best forum was to put this, so I just put it here. If any mods feel it fit better somewhere else, it's cool if you move it.

LIFE? Do I take it too seriously? Aren't we supposed to take it seriously? Or is it just a ride that we're on until it stops that we're supposed to sit back and try to enjoy and not get so worked up about?

Maybe it's like Forrest Gump said...maybe it's both? Maybe it is just a ride? An unpredictable ride that at times will be thrilling, fun, and keep you begging for more while at other times it will terrify you, make you cry and leave you looking for any way to make it stop?

It's funny how quickly things change and life does a 360 degree turn. It seems that change has two speeds, crazy fast and agonizingly slow. I don't know which one I prefer?

Over the last month, I have moved, lost my job which was supposed to be my new start/saving grace, lost my medical insurance, claimed bankruptcy which was put on hold since I lost my job, and oh yeah, I'm two weeks late on my rent and have to go to court next week and face possible eviction. On top of this, my last employer is retaliating against me for filing reports against them for abuse and the death of a patient and they have filed inflammatory and false statements to the State Board which has opened an investigation and wants me to interview with them next week. I feel like I am trying to tread water in the middle of the ocean during a hurricane!!

Now, I'm not looking for pity. A little compassion is okay, but please, no pity!! I know that there were choices I made at certain times that have gotten me to where I am now. I can't blame everyone else; even though it's easier and I sometimes want to. I need to be accountable for my choices and do the best I can to learn from them.

There is some great news though!! Some very great news!! This last weekend I had an interview for a very cush job....but it was out of state. I spent the little money I had left on a plane ticket and I flew down and interviewed. I stayed with my Mother and Grandmother, both have been abusive towards me in my past. I got a chance to see other members of my family that I hadn't seen in a while; I got to see their children I had not had a chance to meet yet and get lots of support and hugs and advice. It was awesome...but it was overwhelming too because these are the same people who sat and watched while my brother and I were being hurt. So as great as it was, seeing them triggered a lot of painful emotions, and I didn't have my own transportation so it's not like I could leave.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, my Interview went well. I felt a good connection between myself and the Director. I had a lot of hope that I would be offered the position. Then the waiting happened.

Four days went by. Each day I became more sure that I was going to get an F-you letter saying "thanks, but NO thanks", but yesterday I received a call from the recruiter. They offered me the position. I GOT THE JOB!!

I felt an immediate surge of relief flow through me. I AM NOT going to be homeless!! I AM going to be able to get medical insurance and stay on my meds!! I'm NOT going to lose my car. I'm not going to lose my animals, who are the only ones I do any of this for right now. Only now, a new sense of overwhelming anxiety sets in. I now have to coordinate an out-of-state move in a week and a half!!

I know.......

poor me, right?

NOT!!! NOPE!!! No complaints here.....just....mental exhaustion! I want to jump up and down and dance around my house in excitement, at the same time I feel like I want to sink into my bed and bawl my eyes out.

All of this feels like it is too much.

Too much change in such a small amount of time. Now comes the struggle with finding out how to financially fund this move. I have no answers as of yet other than don't pay any bills this month and use all my utility money to try and make the move.

It's exhausting....and thrilling all at once. Another new beginning. Another ending. An Ocean during a hurricane; tossing and churning, and ebbing and flowing. Like dying and being born, at the same time.

How is it that I am this strong as people say I am? My T says I'm doing great, that I have a lot of inner strength and resilience. How? I feel weak. My legs, like Jello. My mind like an endless vat of styrofoam peanuts. I feel lost; tumbling through space at the mercy of some invisible force. Yet, how could I do this if I wasn't strong? How would I be managing? Maybe this feeling of weakness is one of those evil, false perceptions that T helps me to identify. You know, when something is good, but it feels wrong or bad. Maybe it is a lie I have been programmed to tell myself, that I am too weak to handle this, by the parental/familiar units. It is a hard-wired belief that I am not good enough. That I don't deserve to be good enough. Maybe....just maybe that belief IS wrong!!

Maybe we are all wrong? Maybe we all feel weak, but we keep going for some reason. We hold on for some reason. Maybe we were all programmed to think we weren't deserving and those voices inside that make us tell ourselves that we are weak are nothing more than old tapes from old times. Maybe we ARE all strong?

I keep thinking about my experience with DBT and how long it has taken me to ACCEPT, radically, that I AM deserving, and to radically ACCEPT that I have continued abusing myself for the abusers in their absence. How long has it taken me to be able to say that I am able to take accountability for hurting myself for them, so they didn't have to anymore. Who gave them that much power to control me in that way?

I DID!! But NOT anymore!! Maybe this is a ride, and that's the biggest dialectic of all, that life can suck and make you sick, and it can be great and make you happy, all at the same time. And that's okay. It's my ride. It's my Ocean. Hurricanes will come and go and there's nothing I can do about it but hunker down with my life vest and let it rage. Fighting it takes too much energy and puts me at risk of drowning. It's time to accept that a hurricane is a hurricane, and a hurricane's job is to rage. Expecting anything different from it would be a waste of time and energy.

I guess my mission now is to learn how to be okay in a hurricane. To know I can survive and to be able to find comfort in the fact that I can't control it, but I can control me, and as long as I teach myself survival skills....I can make it through the toughest storms out there.

Maybe we all can?