Beautiful souls recognize beautiful souls. Keep being genuine. Your people will find you.

Getting Stuck

Originally posted on August 17, 2020

My beautiful children in 2008

Why is it that when I feel stuck, writing is one of the last things I want to do? I want to get lost in a fantasy world, the reality I’ve created in my mind where everything is right and good. The future I want is where I have the people I love, I’m happy and secure, and I feel completely loved. A world without pain and sadness and worry. A world without all this damn crying. I want to stay in this dream world where I can see everything beautiful. Where I don’t have to face the problems that give me anxiety, where I don’t have to think about the hurt that I feel. I am stuck in inaction, weighed down, and afraid to see things I don’t want to see.

I have been stuck for quite a while. Writing is healing, and sometimes healing is too much work. Writing brings out the emotions I don’t want to feel. It makes me cry. And therein lies the healing, but it is ugly and uncomfortable. It is raw and painful. Most growth comes through these emotions, although I often would rather not feel them. Haven’t I learned by now that burying the emotions and the thoughts is the worst thing I can do? Avoiding the pain, stuffing it deep inside, only destroys me like a cancer. It eats away at everything I’ve worked toward, everything I’ve already overcome.

Why do I forget that the only way out is through? Why is it my instinct to hide from what causes me pain? I get it, no one wants to feel the hurt. Avoiding the pain is necessary sometimes, like when I am in a room full of people or when I am driving. I am fortunate my work allows me to be vulnerable and work through these struggles. I am allowed to have anxiety at work and I model for the clients how to get through it. I can be real when I’m at work. The nature of my job is to be authentic and the last thing they want me to be is fake. However, I still push away the hurt and tears because I don’t like feeling the ugly things when people are around. Sometimes I’m afraid I will get stuck there and not find my way out. I don’t want another crisis or breakdown. I don’t want to lose everything I’ve accomplished during this past year.

I am very good at forgetting the obstacles I’ve overcome and only seeing what is still in my way. My therapist once asked me to create a timeline of everything that has happened to me, especially in these last several years. She suggested that by doing this I will see how far I have come, that I’m not in the same place I was in 5 years ago, or even one year ago. I have started this timeline. I am working on it slowly, and eventually, I will extend it back to my beginning. I want to attach the emotions to the traumas and the successes. I want to see everything that has made me who I am today. I want to see it…but I am also afraid. My life up to this point is not easy to look at.

That is why I like my dream world. I want to know that the struggles are not going to stay with me forever. I want to think that my hurts and traumas can remain in my past life. I want to move forward and just be healed already. It’s unfortunate, but real life doesn’t work that way. I can’t realistically expect that only good things lie in my future. I can’t hide from the reality that life is very messy. The fantasy world I hope for is just that, a fantasy, and fantasies are not real. There are so many things that I have no control over and the best thing I can do for my future is to figure out how to let go of the illusion of control.

It is far better to live in the current moment instead of getting stuck in the past or dreaming about what might come. I try but struggle to learn how to do this. Sometimes I do well, but sometimes my mind, my thoughts, and my emotions are a giant jumble of wires that have gotten crossed and tangled like a fishing line.

Photo by Kier in Sight Archives on Unsplash

You understand how impossible it is to untangle a bird’s nest of fishing line…you don’t even try. You can only cut it off and start over. The human mind with all our experiences and memories is not a fishing line. I can’t just cut out the tangles and start over. I have to painfully and diligently untangle each and every strand. Or learn to live with the mess. I’m tired of the mess. I want to heal and become better. I want to achieve great things and help others do the same.

That means I must work to make sense of all of it. I can take a break when it gets to be too overwhelming. I just can’t stop for long. I like things neat and orderly, and unless I keep trying to work through the ugly it will stay an ugly mess. I cannot accept that. The only way out is through. I must do the work. I need to remind myself that writing about it, getting it out of my head as words on a screen or paper is the best way to untangle my mess. Writing is a healing process. I’m tired of feeling stuck. I want to be free.


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