Lately I have been thinking a lot (well, when am I never?). I’ve been thinking about how my old coping mechanisms no longer fit in with where I am now.
I’ve experienced significant trauma in life. I really should have been dead or in a mental asylum with no hope of ever regaining sanity. Most of my adult years have been spent burying my head in the proverbial sand of work. I have just worked and worked and worked. I am wired to work they say. What most did not realise was that I worked so that at the end of my days I would be so tired that I wouldn’t have to face my issues. I worked on everyone else while I remained broken. I tried to help everyone else get their healing because I didn’t deserve it, or it would never happen for me. Persons saw a hardworking, well organized, intelligent, successful and influential woman. I saw a dead little girl who was ready to quit life any moment. I was never suicidal but I might as well have been. My self esteem did not exist. My insecurities were higher than the highest mountain. In my mind, I was beyond redemption. No one would ever love me, not even God. And in all this I somehow had so much love to give. So I pressed on…I worked….
Then God decided it was time. I remember driving, crying and shaking. No appetite and this was it. I had hit bottom…that was October 2019. I called my counselor and I said, I cannot do this anymore. My sisters said to me you cannot go on living like this. You need to get help. I listened…whew child…I am writing through tears this morning…
Fast forward a year later…here I am…in transition. I have started to heal. I think I still underestimate all that I have been through…but now I have a new dilemma. The crutch called busyness is no longer attractive. Don’t get me wrong. I am still wired to work [un]fortunately. However, these days I am just tired of the quotidian drudgery. I can envision a different type of life but I have not yet attained that. So…my question as I am thinking out loud is…
What do I do now? How do I wait when the coping skills that used to keep me “sane”, no longer work because I don’t need them?
GMW