This time in my life is hard, but if I think about it, it might be the same hard it’s been for years. A sweet person, waiting waiting waiting for pain to subside, for inspiration to strike, for something within to be unleashed.
After many years of work on myself in therapy and using my brain and intuition to repattern my tendencies towards anxiety, shame and being stuck, I did actually start to feel better. I got less overwhelmed from tasks at work building up. I started saying ‘no’ more and putting less on my plate, and saying ‘yes’ to more connection, adventure, and creativity. I thought, is this what being generally happy and content is like? Have I done it?
And it’s like my body said “Okay you leveled up. Time for the next round.” and a whole slew of new, but old, heartaches started to surface and pour out of me. An understanding of how alone I really feel. Of how I let people hurt me over and over again, so that when I’m ready to stop being with them I can villainize them for not loving me as I loved them. Of how scared I am of living an unremarkable life. A clarity that I truly feel unclear and unsatisfied with almost everything — does that mean the dissatisfaction comes from the thing not being the right thing? Or is it a way that I allow myself to constantly feel like I haven’t found ‘it’. The right job, house, friends, love to be happy. I keep myself from success by never feel happy with it and always wanting something totally different.
I started watching this show “Nine Perfect Strangers” in which 9 people with pain and suffering go on a wellness retreat excepting it to be an escape in order to slow down, do some yoga, eat some healthy food, and change their lives. It turns out to be a pretty creepy (maybe cult-ish? we’ll see in future episodes) program with a leader (played by Nicole Kidman) who has hand-picked a group to pull on each other’s pain and re-birth them into new lives.
Watching this show, a sad feeling settled into my body. As much as I don’t want to be in the creepy, manipulative situation these characters have landed themselves in, I do crave a re-birth of sorts. I constantly am waiting for the right thing to take my by the shoulders, shake me awake, and start my new life. I have studied Ayurveda, yoga, breathwork. I am a spiritual person and I guess I believe that commitment to spirit is the way to be born and reborn at all times — like when we do śavāsana in yoga (corpse pose) to allow ourselves to integrate the death and rebirth in our bodies due to the practice. But part of me wants something bigger — but what’s the right way? An ayahuasca retreat, shrooms, a silent meditation retreat, 30 day yoga teacher training in India, an Eat Pray Love adventure?
And do I need an extreme shaking of my being in the first place? Is it okay to live a somewhat stuck, slow moving life that is a little sad, a little unremarkable, but also unique and very loving in which I’m pretty good at my job and have people who like me around? Should I just spend more time enjoying the life that I have than feeling into my desire to be different or have a different life? I see people around me who are satisfied. They like their job enough, they like their family enough, they like where they live enough. Perhaps a life that is ‘good enough’ is underrated.
Honestly, the saddest part of these feelings is that it really makes me wonder, am I the kind of person who would join a cult?
