Now that quarantine is winding down and I am all vaccinated up, I have made plans to do a ridiculous amount of things: I am getting drinks and catching up with multiple different friends (nothing will ever compare to last week's drunken martini night but that is a story for another time). I am doing in person Dynasty nights, I booked a reservation for DISNEYLAND. I am going to Napa. I have the lesbian wedding and two nights at the casino and two days in Kentucky and three days at the beach. I am starting TECH WEEK FOR A SHOW. I am excited for each and every bit, and I find I am getting back into the swing of things much more quickly than I thought . I am doing pretty good with balancing out all the fun things with good peeps with the need to just spend some time connecting with myself. The biggest lesson I have learned from this last year-ish: Doing all the things is not what makes me feel most connected to world. I could easily be doing something ridiculously fun and just shut down and want to go home because something will trigger me to not feel connected. Many times, I don't even know what caused it. I feel the most connected to the world when I take time for myself.
Disassociation is one of the many uncomfortable things that anxiety and depression brings and, for me, it's the most unpleasant. I would rather feel the feels than not feel anything at all. I start feeling like I don't exist, like I am looking at myself and the world through tiny a peep hole, and everything is just going through the motions. I have learned one way to deal with this is by getting up and doing my morning pages every morning. Three pages and whatever comes into my brain comes out on that paper. As I have been spending more time in my journals and with self-care and with people and less time on social media and watching TV, I have learned I can pull myself out of that wake-up funk just by writing or doing yoga or walking-- aka spending that time with myself in a productive way. My dot journal helped a lot too because I can see every single day the things I want to get done, and I get so excited as I mark things as completed or shift things around. If I weren't doing these things, I would pretty quickly hit that wall where I felt like I were just floating through life. I would miss all the good details like how the morning feels when I get up to write. Or the joy of opening my blinds and letting the sun pour on. Or the pureness of that first sip of warm coffee and being pleasantly surprised when I make it just right. Starting my day off with myself has forced me to figure out my morning priorities: Spend time in my journals and get down on the mat (when my chiropractor hasn't warned me off like she has now) or walking around the block in the morning before the sun has fully come up.
It's so weird to me that connecting with myself has made me feel more part of this planet, even more than connecting with other people. Not that I don't think connecting with other people is important. For me, an essential part of my growth has been cultivating a friend's circle I love. But learning about myself, how I function and what I need, is one of the best things coming out of quarantine and therapy. Living in the details. Those details spill out of my brain in my morning times when I am alone.
As I am turning the corner and closer to 50 now than 40 and really decided it was time to make some positive changes in my life, I don't have any regrets. I've lived the life I've wanted and when I decided it wasn't working for me, I made the change. It's so empowering to look back and know that as I am getting to know myself and be comfortable with all my quirks (even those horrid, inpatient ones), I am accomplishing more than I ever thought possible. Even in the ordinary, mundane, daily existence, I feel like I making the ordinary extraordinary for myself and the people around me. I wouldn't change a thing.
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