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Tonight I experienced the strongest urge to get high that I’ve felt since I started Suboxone treatment.
Someone was crushing up a pill on a bit of glass from some old picture frame, getting ready to snort some oxycontin. And at the moment that I walked in on that, I felt like every single cell in my body was just longing for that feeling and I burst into tears. Much to my horror and embarassment, I even wailed: It’s not fair! I want to get high too!
WHOA! Where the heck did that come from? As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I retracted them. No, I don’t want to get high. And even if I did, I couldn’t because I take a high enough dose of suboxone to block the effects of any other opiates I might take. But I need to look at that feeling, that longing, and see what was behind it – because I need that self understanding if I’m ever going to be able to do this without the Suboxone someday.
First thing, I am tired and in pain. While the Suboxone does a pretty damn good job of managing my fibromyalgia pain (or at least it has so far), I am in the middle of a moderately bad flare-up right now, so my baseline of pain is higher and my pain tolerance is lower and I am more easily fatigued. I worked 7.5 hours, on my feet the whole time, and my upper back/shoulders/neck are very stiff and painful right now. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot I can do about that, except to recognize that I need more rest and to take some comfort measures.
Also, I didn’t really eat all day – which usually results in me being a mess by the time I get home. And is not good for the fibro either – anything that upsets the tenuous balance can precipitate a disaster.
Those are the obvious things that I needed to take care of, but I think there’s something else at work here too. And I’m pretty sure I know what it is.
It’s fun. Or the lack thereof in my life of late. Especially shared fun with my husband, J.
Getting high is what we did for fun for quite a long time. We really liked getting high together, watching movies and talking late into the night. Because no matter what hell you finally arrive at that inspires you to quit the drugs, in the begining, drugs are fun. It feels good to get high, which is why people do it. It was also a way for us to connect, which sounds crazy, but you’ll just have to trust me on that.
For about 30 seconds tonight, I really wanted to “play” with my husband. We’ve been having some difficulties in our relationship, and haven’t been connecting. I wanted to go there with him, be in his headspace, share that euphoria. I wanted the mini-vacation from reality. I wanted my body to stop hurting for a couple of hours, to float in that blissful cloud again…
Not. Gonna. Happen. I left the room where the drugs were and found something to distract myself. I remembered that, even if I could get high, which I can’t, it wouldn’t be worth the negative consequences. I would feel bad about myself, I would jepordize my hard-won beginings of stability, I would want to do it again, and then again. And all for what - a feeling - something that never lasts.
But there is something that I need to learn from this experience. I’ve got to find other ways of cultivating pleasure and connection in my life and in my relationship. I need to have a ready list of self-care things I can do when I’m feeling so bad that using starts to look like an option, even if it’s only for half a minute. I also need to keep doing the work I need to do in order to live sucessfully with fibromyalgia. Sure, the suboxone helps with the pain and I’ve added exercise into the mix, but there is much more I could be doing with diet and supplements and time management and meditation.
And maybe I do need a little vacation. The past 6 months have been really intense, and I think it’s time that I got to go away for a long weekend by myself, to be with friends or do a yoga retreat or a writing workshop or any one of the many things that I’ve never treated myself to because all my extra money went up my nose. I’ve been working harder at this than I ever thought I could, and some breathing room, a little space sounds fantastic right now. There are a few places where I’ve been that brought me the feelings of peace and ease that I was always seeking from the drugs – maybe I’ll ask the universe just how I could get back to one of those places sometime soon. That would be just fine.
There is a new weight-loss program being offered at the health club to which I belong. The program is called “Take it Off”, and the posters they’ve put up all around the club to advertise the program feature a photograph of a woman’s torso, cropped from midthigh at the bottom to just above her waist at the top. The torso is in profile, unbuttoned & partially lowered jeans with a white measuring tape wrapped around the waist. The body pictured, of course, is the sun tanned, flat-stomached, tiny waisted, firm-booty ideal of womanhood.
I got to the gym to feel good about myself, to feel healthy and strong and to have fun. When I’m there, I don’t want to see ads for weight-loss programs – which cost extra, above what they charge for membership – and especially not ads that are designed to prey on my insecurities about my body, ads which I find inherently degrading to women in that they use sexualized images of our body parts to make us feel bad about ourselves because we aren’t as sexy as the ass/hips/abs/waistline featured in the photo so we better sign up for some all-new deprivation techniques right now.
ARRRGGGHH.
Did you gain some pounds over the holidays? Sign up now to Take it Off! This time the offending ad is on the inside of the bathroom-stall door, right at my eye level as I sit on the toilet. I reach over and slide the full-color flyer out of its plexiglass holder, and dig around in my backpack. My trusty Sharpie is missing, but I do have a pen. So I lean the flyer up against the wall and right next to where it tells me to sign up to Take it Off! I write: Or Just Learn to Love Yourself the Way You Are. I slip the flyer back into its spot on the stall door and admire my work.
I wonder how many women just give up on health clubs/gyms because of these messages? How many times in a day do we have to be reminded of exactly how far short of the ideal we fall? Of how much work we need to do to make our bodies acceptable to society? My membership comes with a free 60 minute consultation with a personal trainer. I was excited about that, since I’ve never had the opportunity to work with a trainer. But when I read the bio’s for the club’s trainers, every single one mentioned something about weight-loss in their 5 sentence blurb. Exactly none of them said they focused on teaching clients how to enjoy being in their bodies, none of them mentioned HAES, none of them wrote about being accepting of larger bodies. This doesn’t make things easy for me – but I will call them all up and see what they have to say.
Before I go back to the club, I’ll also be printing up some stickers with body-positive messages on them, to be conveniently adhered to offensive weight-loss advertisments. I’m also thinking about making a proposal to the club that they start to have some info about HAES, and maybe some size-positive exercise classes. I’m thinking fat yoga would be a damn fine place to start – since the skinny yoga teacher wasn’t too good at helping me modify poses to accomidate my larger size – and then we could take it from there. Maybe a nutrition program for those of us who would like to learn about eating healthfully, without the focus on weight-loss.
Who knows what could happen? I just know that as a fat woman, the health club scares the crap out of me. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. I bet there are a lot of ways that the club could make us fat women feel more welcome (bigger towels, please?) and if we felt welcome we’d be more likely to join, and participate. And that is definietly a win-win situation.
I am feeling sad today. It’s hard to write about, or even think about…I feel confused by my emotions.
Thursday was my complaint-free day. It went great – C and I had a good morning and after she got off to school I had some much-needed quiet time. Work was fine, and the not-complaining thing made my therapy session uber productive. But, all that reflecting and meditating and quiet-time stirred some stuff up and since I can’t numb it away, here it is.
Thursday afternoon, driving to therapy this thought floated into counsciousness: I am afraid that if I continue to get well, my relationship with J will not survive. I remember having that same thought over a year ago, when I first started therapy for my depression and before my use of painkillers had really gotten out of hand. Then, I shoved the thought to the deep, dark recesses of my mind but here it is again, making its presence known.
I don’t know what to do with this thought. Engage it? Argue with it? Just sit with it? Analzye? Deny? Rationalize it away? For now, I’m just trying to recognize that I have this thought, and this fear, and to just be with that. It is a possibility that if I keep growing and changing, but my relationship doesn’t, that the relationship will end. It is also a possibility that something else will happen. What I do know is that right now, I am no longer at a place where I can allow that fear to stop me from taking care of myself.
It is hard to know how to go about healing this brokenness. My therapist suggested that we go to couples counseling, but I don’t know if I am ready for that. I have so much that I’m dealing with just trying to take care of myself right now, and my instinct is to just disengage as much as possible. Maybe I don’t hold out a lot of hope for counseling helping us either, because I don’t see that J has a lot of motivation to change. What I see happening is the counseling becoming a thing that I have to make happen, keep track of, and put a ton of effort into. And I don’t want to take my focus off of myself right now when I’m doing so well.
J has been really depressed. Communication has basically broken down between us. I got so tired of trying to talk to him about something, only to be accused of “giving him shit,” or “going off on him” or “freaking out” or whatever, so tired of his defensiveness, so tired of everything turning into a fight that ended with me crying and him storming out of the house that I’ve just given up. He can do what he wants, I guess, and I will do my best to take care of me and C. I’m not going to try to get him out of bed in the morning, I’ll just take care of it. I’m not going to try to get him to go to the doctor, to do physical therapy, to clean up anything…
When I woke up this morning, there was a huge mess in the bathroom, where he is using the bath tub for a “project,” which has resulted in the tub being clogged up and unusable. I said nothing. I will go to the gym and shower there in the morning before work, I guess. I folded all the laundry that’s been piling up, and did a bunch of the dirty dishes. He did play video games with C for a while so I could nap today, since I didn’t sleep well and was feeling pretty badly this afternoon. I’m grateful for that.
For whatever reason, the path he has chosen right now is one that I don’t understand. The things he’s doing don’t seem to be helping him, or helping us, but he’s not open to discussing that. Having experienced the mind-warping effects of serious depression more than a few times in my own life, I’ve been inclined to wait and see how this spins out, to hope that the fog will lift from his mind and he’ll realize that this isn’t how he wants to live. And do something about it.
But I also know that I am not ok with the way things are. I can live with it, for now, but not forever. I hate not being able to reach him, and I hate even worse that some small part of me is starting to not care. At least I’ve finally realized that being angry about it accomplishes nothing, that expressing my anger about it changes nothing, it’s just destructive and makes me feel ugly and hateful. So, like I said, I will just try to be with it, to accept that it is what it is, and to take care of what I can. And I will try to know that I am strong enough to work through this pain and sadness, and try to have faith that what I find on the other side will be what’s right for me.
Here’s the deal – I like to complain. It’s what I do. When I met Mr B, I was a waitress, and part of why he fell in love with me was my hilarious waitress-rants. I like to think of complaining as a kind of art – I take something shitty that happened to me, and I turn it into a funny story to make you laugh. And I’m really good at it. I take pride in my ability. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s a big part of my identity.
But it’s still negative. In order to get the grist for the funny mill, I have to focus on what’s wrong, how I was mistreated, how people are fools, etc. As anyone who was ever the class clown knows, getting that laugh is like a high. It provides validation and a sense of power: Look how I make people happy! See how they laugh at my jokes!
Which is ok, to an extent. But my sense of humor has long been both my armor and my most trusted method for reaching out to others. So much so that I’ve noticed that I’m alwayson the lookout for situations that I can turn into a funny bitchfest later. I feel like I can’t stop it, can’t shut it off, or just shut up. I want to be able to relate to people in a way that is positive, be funny in a way that’s also positive (or at least neutral) instead of constantly pointing out how things are screwed up and wrong. I mean, they are screwed up and wrong a lot of the time – but it doesn’t have to be the focus of my life.
I‘m going to try to go without complaining for the next 24 hours. (I’ll wait a moment while those of you who know me get control of your laughter). I think this will be a good opportunity to really take time to think before I speak, and it will help me see how my thoughts shape my moods and my perceptions of reality. And the complaint-ban even extends to physical pain, which I also complain about a lot and not in a funny way. I think there are some unarticulated beliefs about my pain that underlie my complaining about it, and I’d like the chance to think about that as well.
Wish me luck.
Free From it All tagged me for the “Favorite Five” blog meme! I’m excited – I’ve secretly wished to be tagged since I started this blog. Yes, I’m a big dork, but I don’t care. I’m still honored – thank you FFIA. *
The rules are -
1. Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words : family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like.
My pick for family is White Christmas, for *friend* I pick Happy Anniversary A&J, for *yourself* Steps on a Path With Heart, for *your love* I’m in Love and for *anything I like* Moment’s of Duh: Balance.
2. Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances so that you get to know them each a little bit better.
I’m tagging:
Have fun!
(how’s that for a catchy post-title?)
Last night, my husband and I watched the new Frontline, The Medicated Child.
The show was heartbreaking. It detailed the lives of several children who have been diagnosed with so-called early-onset bi-polar disorder. This is a controversial diagnosis, the incidence of which has increased dramatically in the past few years. The kids in the Frontline show were all taking multiple psych meds – for example, one boy was taking an ADD medication, an anti-anxiety medication and an atypical antipsychotic medication; another child was on 8 different medications at the same time – and were all experiencing side effects that were, in my opinion, serious or even debilitating.
Some of these children were very young. None of them appeared to be involved in other forms of treatment (outside of medication) to help them. The families weren’t in therapy together. There was no talk of complimentary or alternative therapies for these kids, just drugs piled on top of drugs. If a side effect of one drug became intolerable, another would be added in an attempt to counteract the first. In at least one child, this polypharmacy seems to have led to the development of permanent dyskinesia (uncontrollable, involuntary movements) which caused him to roll his head back repeatedly. He was apparently the sole exception to the meds-only treatment paradigm – after 12 years of increasingly bad side effects, he is trying to cut back on the number of drugs and incorporate yoga into his treatment.
Other scary highlights from the show included a psychiatrist from Stanford talking about “preventative” treatment for early-onset bipolar, in the form of medicating children who are not “yet” having sypmtoms, and a Colorado outfit that claims brain-scans can be used to diagnose mood disorder. Also, a disturbing discussion of the conflation of ADD symptoms and the symptoms of a manic episode; and doctors justifying their use of atypical antipsychotic medication in children by implying that they are safer than SSRI’s. WTF!?! These are powerful dangerous with horrible and sometimes permanent side-effects, and are wholly unstudied for use in children.
Watching the program stirred up a lot of thoughts and feelings for me, as both a psychiatric patient (survivor?) and as a mother. I made my husband swear to me that we would keep our daughter away from the psychiatric establishment – a pledge to which he readily agreed, as he is a survivor of that system too.
My first formal psychiatric diagnosis came at the age of 14 – Clinical Depression – and with the diagnosis came psychiatric hospitals and medications. Since that time, I have had one 2 year period in my life when I took no psych meds and was depression-free (for the most part), but I did self-medicate with marijuana during that time. Other than that, I have been on one or more psychiatric medications for the past 20 years.
I often wonder if I will ever be able to function without the meds. I have flirted with the idea of going to a Naturopath, trying to withdraw from all the medications, just to see who the hell I really am. But I’m always too scared of what might happen. A couple of times I’ve been forced off my meds, by the loss of health insurance, and it wasn’t pretty. Then again, I wasn’t being supported by any kind of health-care practitioner at the time, so…
Also, I wonder about how the medications have changed my brain. What the impacts of taking such powerful psychotropic medications while I was a young adolescent are. I wonder why no one questioned the use of these drugs, which weren’t approved for use in anyone but adults. Most of the time, I’ve been on more than one medication at the same time. What are the effects of this? How much of my supposed “mental illness” is just side-effects from the long-term use of multiple psychatric medications.
At one point, a psychiatrist I saw while my regular shrink was on vacation, decided my depression diagnosis was wrong. He relabeled me. Bipolar, Type II (depression with hypomanic episodes). He switched me to Lithium, and added thyroid medication too, even though my thyroid labs showed normal thyroid function. Now, my thyroid is underactive, significantly so, and I’m told I will have to medicate that for the rest of my days. Any connection? Who knows. In any case, Lithium caused me to gain a large amount of weight, which became the wellspring of a whole new complex of problems.
A year of lithium, and my diagnosis was revised again. Major Depression and Disthymia. Anxiety Disorder. Panic Attacks. More medications, new, different, better. At the age of 19, while taking the popular SSRI Zoloft, I attempted suicide and nearly succeeded. I only recently connected this event to the reports of other teens attempting (and suceeding at) suicide while on Zoloft, which resulted in a “black box” warning for that drug. I never have been able to really explain why I did it, and I think maybe I’ve found the key to understanding.
My suicide attempt resulted in a three-day coma and then a three-month stay on a psychiatric ward. I’d just completed my first year of college, sort of. I did complete some of my classes, less than half I think. The hospital was private. It was pretty nice, I guess I was lucky in that respect. Every single patient on my ward was medicated to the eyeballs. I remember wanting to sleep 20 hours a day. I think it was during that time that I began to give in to the idea that I was in this for the long-haul, that I wasn’t going to outgrow my depression, that I was damaged goods, forever.
I’m not really sure where I’m going with this rambly post. Recently I discovered, via the blog Furious Seasons, that there could be a different way to think about “mental illness.” That it might not have to be a chronic condition that has to be managed with medication. That there are people who have healed from their illnesses, and who are now well. This idea is so revolutionary to me, and is profoundly challenging. I had to be broken down so hard, and so many times, before I accepted that I would have this illness forever, that it now feels like I’d be giving something up to try to believe that I could heal from my illness, heal and be well.
There are more complications too. Depression led me to use drugs recreationally and to self-medicate. Other health problems – hypothroidism and fibromyalgia – add even more complexity to my situation. My use and eventual abuse of painkillers, and my decision to treat opioid dependence with Suboxone is yet another layer. I have also had horrible migraines since the age of 12, for which I now take 2 separate prescription medications. I had a bout of post-partum depression as well. At times it seems like my mental-health situation has been like a snowball rolling down the mountain, picking up speed and bulk as it travels. I wonder when it will finally reach the base, and what will happen?
I’ve just finished looking through my brand-new We’Moon Date Book & Calendar for 2008. A good friend of mine has been giving this book as a Winter Solstice gift for the past several years, and it has become one of the gifts that I look forward to the most.
It’s more than just a calendar or appointment book - though it functions very well as both. It’s also a moon calendar, is full of amazing art and writing made by women for women. It focuses on women’s spirituality, on our power and our connection with Earth. It has astrological info and writings about rituals that we can use to honor the cycles of the seasons. Having this book makes me more likely to actually write down my appointments, because I love having any excuse to bust it out and look at it. I use it to track my menstrual cycles and moods, and because of the way it’s designed I’ve learned to notice how the moon effects my moods. It’s true!
This year’s theme is Mending the Web, and the book is dedicated to “women whose work mends the web of life.”
Here is a little snippet from the Introduction to the theme:
“Turn the wheel, plant the seeds, follow the cycle through a new year. As you fill these pages with appointments, may they reflect many moments of pleasure, many meetings of lovers, times of rest and celebration, and the actions only you can take to bring healing and justice to this world.”
How lovely is that? The whole calendar is full of these kinds of blessings and encouragements, and who doesn’t need more of that in their lives? Nothing I can say will do it justice, you’ll just have to go look for yourselves. Get one for yourself and one or two for your women friends or relatives, it’s not too late!
This is a game I used to play a lot some years ago, called The Cube.
The book I got it from said that some people think it is an ancient Sufi teaching riddle. Whatever its origins, it’s really cool and is totally worth doing, in my humble opinion. I will put the questions in the post and then the second part in the comments. Don’t read the “key” in the comments until you think about the questions, or it won’t work. Ready?
This is an imagination game. There are no wrong answers. Just read the question, close your eyes and visualize and then write down or, if you’re playing with someone else, verbalize what you see. Do each question before you read on – it works better that way.
1. You’re in a desert. It is a very simple landscape, sand, horizion line, sky. Close your eyes and picture this desert. When you have the desert visualized, open your eyes and move on to the next question.
2. In this desert, there is a cube. See it. When you have the cube visualized, open your eyes and read on
Describe the cube: what color is it? what’s it made of? where is it situated in the desert? does it touch the ground? does it move? Is it above the horizion? below? does the horizion bisect it? The more detail you can give, the better! When you’re ready, move on.
3. Now, in the picture with the desert and the cube, there is a ladder. See it. When you have the ladder pictured in your mind, read on.
Describe the ladder. What is it made of? Is it old or new? Where is it in relation to the Cube? The horizion? When you’re ready, move on.
3. Now, in this picture with the desert, the cube and the ladder, there is a horse. Picture the horse. Close your eyes, and when you’ve got the picture of the horse, open your eyes and read on.
Describe the horse. What is it doing? What color is it? Is it old or young? Is it a certain kind of horse? Is it interacting with the cube or the ladder? Be as detailed as you can. When you’re ready, move on.
4. In this picture with the desert, the cube, the ladder and the horse there is a storm. See the storm. Close your eyes…I think you know what to do by now 
Describe the storm. What kind of storm is it? Is it near or far? Is it moving? In what direction? How does the storm effect the cube, the ladder and the horse? Move on when you’ve described the storm.
5. Finally, in the picture with the desert, the cube, the ladder, the horse and the storm, there are flowers. See them, read on when you’re ready.
Describe the flowers. Color? Kind? Many or few? Where are they in relation to the other elements of the picture? Be as detailed as you can.
Ok, now, close your eyes one more time and take a look at the picture you’ve created. This image is unique. No one else sees what you see, no one else combines these 6 elements the way you do. Look at this picture for as long as you wish, and then go to the comments section to find out what it all means.
Bad days are like a slap in the face. I mean, when I was doing drugs all the time and not taking care of my self or my life, I expected things to be crappy. And they were. Now that I’m trying so hard to make things right, and things are actually really good most of the time, a bad day just feels like a personal smack-down from above.
Headache, scratchy throat. No one put the garbage out to the curb (because if i don’t do it or tell someone else to do it, it doesn’t get done) so I ran out there barefoot to catch the truck and pulled a muscle in my hip. My arm where the implants were removed isn’t healing right, and my concerns about it received a frosty reception. Whiny kid, hopped up on sugar. Headache. Anxiety all day haunting me like a ghost. DSHS appointment looming. Car insurance needs to be paid, so does that ticket for my expired tags. The only appointment I can get for someone to look at my arm is at the ass-crack of dawn on the other side of town. Husband out “running errands”. When he was sick he went to bed when I came home from work and I don’t get to do that. C’s testing for “advanced learning opportunities came back and she didn’t qualify – which is bullshit, I know she just got bored of taking the test, but I really wanted her to be able to go to the fancy gifted-kid school. And slacker that I am I’ve already missed the application deadlines for private schools next year. As if we could afford that anyway. If I sit for more than a few minutes, I’m stiff when I get up, and have to hobble and limp. My joints ache. That fucking headache!!!! So tired.
I’m ungreatful. An ingrate. All day long I’ve been trying to adjust my attitude, and I just can’t seem to let go. I wish everyone would shut the fuck up and leave me the fuck alone for the next 24 hours at least. I’m starting to get a fibro flare-up, because I’m sick and stressed and I’m just worn too thin, everyone expecting and wanting and thinking that I’m OK when I want to scream for them to remember that I am SICK with a chronic illness that saps my energy and strength and and and
But, as the years drag on with the fibro thing, people don’t want to hear about it. I’m sure it seems like whining. Seems that way to me, right now for sure. Whine whine whine.
Today sucks, and the only thing that is good is that it will be over pretty soon. These days challenge my resolve. They make me long for the time when I knew that after I got the kid to bed, I could lay out a fat rail of oxy and float away in that warm, rolling bliss.
I have to make myself remember that it stopped working. That after a while, I had to take drugs just to not get dopesick, and there was hardly ever a high anymore. I have to remember how awful I felt, how I was mean, volatile, irritable, crazy, desperate, hopeless. Never, ever, forget where I came from, where I was when I said: I quit.
In a few minutes I will wash C’s hair and put her to bed. Then I can go to sleep, or read, or watch a movie. Nothing that bad happened today, it was just a lot of annoyances on top of being sick. Tomorrow’s another day.
Blegh.
I have an appointment to check out a massage therapy school tomorrow morning.
The first time I decided to go to massage therapy school was over ten years ago. I got pregnant instead, and for some reason decided to move to California. I had a miscarriage, but we left Colorado anyway. That is something I regret.
I moved back to Colorado eventually, without the asshat boyfriend, and while I was there I finally got back into college. I was doing really well, so, naturally I had to fuck it up. How could I accomplish that? Move away! So that’s what I did. I moved to Washington.
My plan was to work for a year to get residency, then finish college. Instead, I met a guy, got engaged, moved in with him and got pregnant. No wedding though. We’re just perma-engaged I guess, though we refer to each other as husband and wife, and we have a child. So, school got side-tracked for a while, but I did go back a couple of years ago.
I’m working my way through, in fits and starts, and am now, after 12 years, one math class away from getting my AA. Woot! But I’ve lost focus. I don’t know what I want to major in, and all of the majors that even interest me are expensive tickets to being an over-educated barista, or an underpaid social-services worker. There’s something about school that makes me feel unhealthy. It’s all that living in my head I think; it furthers my disconnection from my body.
So I’ve been thinking about massage therapy school again. I like the idea of working in a physical capacity like that. Of having a job that entails making people feel good. I’m also interested in some types of therapy that combine body-work with talk therapy – somatic psychotherapy is one, Hakomi is another. When I massage C, I think of how healing massage therapy could be for children; when I get massages for myself, I think how healing it would be for more fat people to get massage. I see so many ways to reach out, so many ways that I could possibly succeed. Scary.
I have been cultivating my inner voice. It yells at me now, to get me out of bed and off to the gym. It’s trying to talk to me about food even. And, lately, it is telling me to do this massage therapy school thing, and to do it now. I am trying to trust that, and not just dismiss it as another of my whims. Then I think, maybe my whims are ok. I’ve made a lot of major life decisions on a whim, and usually they’ve worked out just fine. Part of me says it doesn’t matter what I do, I just need to do something. Something to fill up the time, keep me occupied.
My plan was to go back to college and finish that damn math requirement this winter. But I let the time for registration come and go without a thought. I’m not ready, or I just don’t want to go back there now. But I’m feeling a little excited about the massage therapy school. A little scared too. How can I pick something, end this directionless limbo I’ve been drifting about for so long? Who am I to be making those kind of life decisions?
Maybe I should stop thinking about it so much. This is what I will do. I will stop thinking about the decision until after I go see the school. I will probably know what I want to do after I see the school anyway. I am making a commitment to attend my appointment tomorrow, even if it is early in the morning and I’m getting a cold.
Wish me luck.
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