there was an exhausting period of several weeks early in the summer when i was churning through every major doubt and insecurity i have. it felt involuntary, like i had no control over where my mind was going as it yanked me into every deep corner in my psyche and forced me to look at every ugliness in my being. i was questioning my job and my future, wondering about my sexuality and doubting my relationship with kevin and my basic self-worth. i hijacked dinners with girlfriends and turned them into therapy sessions about my job, which i was unable to bring myself to care about. i wrote kevin pages-long emails, desperate missives, while he was trying to move his mom out of their old home and certainly dealing with plenty on his own. i remember that day crying in the shower as i tried to accept what felt inevitable–he and i wouldn’t work out and i had to break up with him. the panic certainly felt real at the time, and i’d spent so much time in my last relationship lying to myself and to my ex that i was willing to do whatever i needed to to shake off those doubts. i remember begging becca to make my brain just stay still for a minute, i wanted to give myself a break so badly. when my brain wasn’t working in overdrive i felt immobilized by something i wanted to call depression.
“chugga chugga chugga chugga. do you know what that’s the sound of?” kevin asked me a few weeks later when i interrupted a quiet moment with another stream of worries. i shook my head. “it’s your brain moving…”
i’m still not sure what was going on then. most of those big psychological battles have retreated–i am not beating myself up so much anymore. i am not breaking up with kevin. he’d never replied to an email so fast. his response that morning was long and thoughtful and measured and calm. i read portions of it to becca out loud over lunch and she told me to save that email and refer to it anytime i felt similar doubts creeping in again.
it turns out that the analytical skills that serve me so well in my work are a detriment to my well-being and personal peace of mind elsewhere. it turns out that the command to “chill out” is actually the quickest way to make me freak out; i’m super sensitive to being told that i’m on edge, for one. and clearing my mind and keeping my brain still are things that takes a great deal of discipline.
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it’s still a little odd to me to be so in love, to call a new person the pet names i used to call another. really vivid memories from my old relationship will occasionally pop up in the middle of a conversation or while i’m passing by a store–somehow it’s only the happy that remains. i take that as a good thing. but occasionally jack’s name will be on the tip of my tongue when i mean to say kevin’s and that is a little disconcerting. sometimes i feel like i live in the past and the future and the present simultaneously.
Filed under: figuring it out, friends, love, work
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