Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit defeated and spun up about my past. Nothing ever worked out for me or went the way I wanted it to. Every significant relationship has led to loss, and sometimes it seems too painful for me to bear. It’s definitely something I don’t want to have continue. I want to interrupt the patterns and bring good things into my life. I want to be able to help people and to feel proud of myself for radiating positivity into the world. So, I came up with a list of affirmations for myself. I started with a few things that are easy for me to believe. Then, I included the few things that feel absolutely impossible followed by the things that I want to be possible. I finish up with quickly repeating that pattern. Here’s my final list: “I am worthy of love and belonging. I deserve to have a beautiful, normal, stable life. Everything I put my hand to prospers. I am a winner. Money flows to me easily and freely. God has my back. God is for me. I am successful in everything I do. My life energy attracts good things into my life. Everyone I meet wants to help and support me. God gives me everything I need. I am abundant and overflowing. I am naturally gifted, and I continue to learn and grow my skills. I am happy, healthy, and whole.” I believe that if I remind myself of these statements every day, then I can transform my life for the better. Even if my circumstances never change, my perspective will. And a change in perspective changes everything.

The quality of one’s life is determined by the quality of one’s relationships. I blow past the Yellowstone, the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore. I’ve been there, done that. Whatever! Places, sights, natural or manmade, are all just places without someone to share them with. My favorite part of going to the Grand Canyon was hanging out with my daughter and her new puppy and chatting with everyone who stopped to pet the dog, even when they didn’t speak very much English. I’ve traveled the country; I’ve driven back and forth multiple times, but it all blurs together on me because the truck stops and rest areas all look the same. I’m there only out of necessity. There’s no juice in the journey, no advent in the adventure. I tend to just keep running without some intervention, someone to call me out and say, “Hey, look at this.”

I thought this time was going to be different. I thought that for once I would be able to slow down and enjoy the journey. I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with reaching the destination. Each new day presents myriad opportunities for adventure and exploring, and here I am, knees tucked up under the wheel, buckled down, and barely venturing from the interstate to empty my tank or to refuel my RV’s tank. I make excuses – gas is too expensive to do any extra driving. I rationalize – I’m already spending enough time driving to go anywhere out of the way. I must be the least curious person alive. Life has more in store for me than grass, trees, and pavement, and the occasional bundle of roadkill. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I want to experience it fully, but am I willing to go the extra mile?

I’ve been so lost for so much of my life that every step I manage to take forward still feels as though it’s taking me in the wrong direction. I’m trying to get home, to start over, but there’s another roadblock each day. If it’s not the disappointment of another person changing plans at the last minute or having to deal with someone else’s mistakes, it’s coming down with a cold again or getting a flat tire. I’m not asking for life to be all roses with no thorns; I just want to quit bleeding before my next injury. Is that really too much to ask? Maybe it’s unrealistic to expect the good things in life to out-weight the struggles, but it sure would be a nice change. I’ve heard that whatever you focus on gets magnified in your perception, so I’m trying to concentrate on what I appreciate and what I’m grateful for. But, when the shitstorm is raging, it’s hard to see anything good through the splatters. Therefore, I pray and I wait for the storm to pass. I cry, and I eat a lot of chocolate as I promise myself to do better once I feel better. Usually though, I have to start to do better before I begin to feel better. It often begins with reaching out to a fellow for me to be reminded that I’m the one who’s responsible for owning my life. I can improve my circumstances if I want to badly enough to do something about it.

One day shy of six months between entries is not too terrible for someone who is turning life upside down and shaking it profusely. Nothing is ever set in stone. Maybe I never learned the concept of object permanence as a baby. My brain still seems to think that if I can’t see it, then it doesn’t exist. And if it does exist somewhere, but I can’t find it, then what good does it do? I used to think that love didn’t exist. I didn’t know what love could look like. As far as I was concerned, love equaled pain. Everyone who ever said they loved me hurt me repeatedly, and I didn’t know how to navigate the disconnect between craving the care and sense of community that all human beings need and my experiential knowing that other people were to be avoided and feared. In order to overcome my loathing of others, I had to find safe places in which to experience foreign concepts such as safety, trust, empathy, etc, which is extremely difficult to do when ill-intent is subconsciously projected upon all homo sapiens. Difficult but possible. I was finally able to find a place full of other people who had been abused. They were so familiar with how it felt to be on the receiving end that they were not receptive of the “predator” label that my mind tried sticking to them. They were gentle, kind, welcoming, and accepting. I finally saw what love could look like for real. Now, I consciously attempt to project love onto everyone I meet instead of fear, and I only avoid those people who refuse to receive it.

Sugar is my heroin. My whole body aches from the over-consumption, but I just can’t stop eating and drinking it. The pain I’m about to face is too great. The pain I’m currently enduring in anticipation of what I know must be done is more than I can bear, so I must find a way to escape it, a distraction. The physical pain distracts my brain from the emotional torment rending my heart to shreds. I know what must be done. I know how much it hurts. I know I want to turn and run, run away and hide, curl into a small, undetectable ball of skin and bones until the danger passes. Only the danger never passes. It remains in every cell of uncertainty. How am I going to survive this time? Why does this keep happening to me? What am I supposed to do next? The story is written, but I’m too scared to turn the next page. The monster at the end of the book, however, is me – sweet, adorable, kind, lovable me. There is nothing to fear. The pain will pass if I provide an opening for it to leak through. If I can ever stop stuffing the pain down faster than it can dissipate, there will be freedom on the other side. That’s a given. That’s the certainty. That’s the promise.

I’m emotionally constipated. There are too many feelings attempting to traverse the narrow passageway between my head and my heart. Like congested traffic squeezing into a bottlenecked lane closure, my emotions are in rush-hour gridlock with nowhere else to turn. All I can do is sit there waiting for the blockage to pass. I try consuming extra fiber, dark chocolate with almonds. I try adding fluids, crying into an old T-shirt. I try all of the destressing techniques I can think of: meditation, exercise, playing with a hapless puppy; still, I wait. I sift through one emotion at a time. The thought of my daughter moving into a house with no furniture in it reminds me of when I lost my apartment during the recession and had to clear out all of my stuff a week before I departed because that was when I was able to procure the help to move it to another location. Due to decades of undiagnosed ADHD and addiction, my past is littered with painful events that wash into the present unexpectedly and unbidden. They mingle among the joy and gratitude and cause a cluster funk of congestion in my chest and throat. Heartbreak happens, but this too shall pass eventually.

I’m a sleepwalking zombie staggering around in search of brains. Whoever came up with the concept of the zombie must have been thoroughly familiar with the basic state of the human condition. In the modern world, we know this state of sleepwalking, or walking around on “autopilot” as it’s often called, is a necessary energy conserving state of being. Life is a continuous cycle of receiving, processing, and releasing energy. Much of our energy in today’s societies is spent in search of brains (ie. looking for our smart phones). We often do whatever we must to conserve the energy we have and to survive each day producing, and consuming, as much as possible with as little exertion of energy as possible. This approach, however, is antithetical to the way in which human beings are designed to live. We function better with more energy exertion, not less. When the human body fuels, works, and sleeps as it’s meant to, much less energy conservation is needed.

Asking for my needs to be met is probably one of my biggest struggles. I don’t want to be a bother. A symptom of what I call “Third Child Syndrome” is the constant battle between wanting to be wanted and the fear, more like the experience-conditioned belief, that our presence will never be valued. Growing up with two older siblings, the now entrenched tapes of rejection played repeatedly: You’re stupid! Shut up! Go away! I don’t remember ever hearing encouraging words spoken over me. All I heard were messages of how much I sucked at everything. Most were true, and those I have learned to dismiss and accept about myself. I am lazy. I do fail at team sports, like epically. And, I do have terrible spelling skills, which is a bit of a handicap for a writer, but thank God for Spellcheck and Dictionary.com. However, the constant jabs, ridicule, and flat-out denial of my wants and needs as a child anesthetized me. It’s difficult for me to recognize what my needs even are, let alone ask for them to be met. So, once I do notice something amiss, it’s my job to tease out what it is that I might need at that particular moment. No one else it going to do it for me. I have to question myself about what I need, take a few deep breaths, and trust that any true lack will come to mind. Then, the hard part: asking.

I’m sorry for my sin. A field of fallen arrows lies before me and within. A quiver full of sorrows is the place we all begin with a target set before us. But I’m too weak to pull the string far enough to go the distance. To end the suffering, requires too much resistance. What was I thinking?

I’m sorry again. A field of wildflowers leaves pollen over my skin; I’m sneezing for hours as the battle rages before me, warriors in all their glory, but I’m too tired to lift the sword high enough for fighting. I must leave it to the Lord as I’m worn out from trying. What was I thinking?

You knew what you were doing when you made me how I am, and you don’t ask too much from me, just to do the things I can. I’ll keep growing like the flowers. I’ll keep flying like the arrows. I might be a zero. I might be nobody’s hero, but I am – I am who I am. I’m a part of a plan. And I know that I’ll be used on whatever path I choose. That’s what I’m thinking.