My response to taking more tangible ‘ownership’ of my blog seems to have been fairly predictable, in that I promptly disengaged from writing it. I don’t think it was necessarily as simple as that, but it was also definitely as simple as that. A micro expression of what was happening in the macro.
I was stretching myself in multiple ways, this not particularly primary among them, and then I hit a limit. Across my whole life, really, I retreated, because I needed a beat. Trauma has robbed me of fortitude, and every time I stray beyond my bounds of safety I am met with a buzzing cloud of emotion that needs to be cleared. It’s frustrating, because it seems that I should be able to ignore the buzzing, to press on through to the other side, with the understanding that the discomfort isn’t terminal. But that strategy always leads to burnout, and I stall. And I have to learn all over again that I need more time than I think I should, to adjust to the world out of bounds.
It’s not something that I want to be true about me, but it’s something that currently is. I was failing to honour who I am, hoping in some sense to transcend it, but instead diminishing it. I was scared that the person I am isn’t worthy of the things I want, and so I was trying to become worthy by being some version of me that doesn’t actually exist.
I am physically incapable of faking it ’til I make it. Trying to, even as a thought experiment, makes every part of me contract. It’s no wonder that inadvertantly falling into that kind of behaviour immediately sets my teeth on edge and makes my every movement awkward. I need to pay more attention to when it happens, and change tact early.
So I looked up some alternatives, to try to correct any pesky temptations that may arise to grin and bear whatever I am going through. Forbes provided ‘face it until you ace it’. I hate it for its cringe-inducing sincerity and inclusion of the word ‘ace’, but it is kind of exactly what I was hoping for. I need to fully experience my incremental steps, to fully embody the change required to sustain them, before trying to move on. I can’t pretend I’m okay when I’m actually irrationally terrified of a shadow from the past. I need to face it, not fake it.