Making up for (assumed) lost time.
I’m in a rush.
Every day. To get up and crack on. All of the things and lists, projects and ideas. They all must happen NOW.
Because I’m making up for lost time.
This is the story that runs. That I’ve wasted so much time. Not doing the things I should have been doing. Like applying for this job, or project, or residency, or funding. Not being ok enough to build a life that is impressive.
Not... not... enough.
This fear of not being enough, being “found out”, told off, made wrong, it flows like white hot, quiet lava underneath the every day.
Another mind map, another plan, another trying desperately to find a way through that makes sense. All the while speaking with kindness to those around me who are trying their hardest in their worlds. To live, eat, make home, make art, with heart, with eyes open.
Often we don’t know what is driving us.
Who is in the driving seat of the bus, and what the other passengers are shouting from the back.
Do you know what I mean here?
What parts, what elements of our learned ways of coping and surviving are up front with their hands on the wheel. We all have them and they can mask themselves and their agendas, their truths…
…as THE truth.
Trying to keep on the course of the day, the week, life, with a flotilla of pained and attention seeking parts clamouring for space. Desperate to keep us safe. Keep us accepted. Keep us loved. Not have us unloved anymore.
Because that it is why they’re here.
Somewhere along the line something painful happened and somewhere inside of us we decided to never let that happen again, so we built a wall, a little personality around the pain, to stop it from happening again.
And they need our love and attention.
They need to be heard and taken care of. They deserve this. They are not wrong, and never have been.
A big driver in my double decker bus is the FIX IT, KEEP GOING, CRACK ON, DON’T STOP task mistress.
She has worked so hard and gotten me through a lot. She helped me survive. She kept me alive. Engaged. Seeking. Active. Trying new things to help and heal.
But she also whizzes on and misses things. Zooming on past bus stop after bus stop, too afraid to pause.
She doesn’t believe that she and I could live a slower more centred pace.
She hasn’t clocked that all the while she has been tending the pain, this pain has eased and softened and strength has grown. She doesn’t believe there could be a place where being herself, myself, openly in the world could lead to good and more easeful things. Relationships, work, home life.
She is still running.
Still trying so very hard. Still trying to make up for the time she fears was lost when the pain, the cracking open, the healing was taking place. The hours of therapy and crying in bed. The trying to live, work and love in a way that was acceptable but eroded and overwhelmed. The depression and anxiety. The running away and falling over, again and again. The surviving.
A large part of this story is entwined in the learning that I am a highly sensitive person and an empath.
I feel things big and deep. This is not a choice and neither is it a flaw. It is genetics, physiology, brain chemistry. But I learned many ways to cope with this deep processing that consisted of hiding, masking, over riding and shaming. Layers and layers of murk and stick.
This is what needed unpicking.
In the unravelling the strategies for coping became clearer. The drivers and passengers on the bus. The slow and gentle tending to this pain through psychotherapy. The unearthing of a core that could support me. The claiming myself back. All the messy bits and denied beauties too.
So to my task mistress today I say “I see you. You are welcome here. Sit with me. You’re ok.”
My heart races a little less. My vision clears. I take a deep breath and look at the task in front of me. I allow it to be just that one thing, and not all the thing. Thank you Sasha at Frank + Feel for this reminder yesterday.
I breathe.
One moment in a day full of movements and moments.
One occasion of noticing.
A small moment of kindness.
I’m here for that.
