You gave me a ladder now
I surely believe I’ll climb
It don’t even matter now
I’m willing to take my time
–Joan Osborne/Ladder
Do you ever feel like you have all of the tools you need to live a serene, healthy life but you just ignore them and keep using the broke ass tools that have been failing to work for your whole life? No? It’s just me, isn’t it. You all are far to well-adjusted to fall into that error.
In fat camp one week we were talking about eating disorders and the similarities in treatment as compared to addiction. Someone asked the group leader if everyone doesn’t have some sort of addiction or similar disorder. My gut reaction was that everyone must. Pretty much everyone I know has something that they are “disordered” about. The instructor indicated that in fact, no–lot of people, maybe most, are very well adjusted and have very good coping skills.
They are the ones who don’t use food the way an addict uses heroin. The ones who get enough exercise. Who don’t have stress-related tics. The ones who don’t self-medicate. The ones I don’t get at all. How can you be a real, living human being and not be an obsessive weirdo like me? At least I’m not compulsive. Those people are freaks. And I say that with deep love for the freaks. Know this.
This left me thinking about my friends and family and asking myself where the fuck are these allegedly sane people with healthy coping mechanisms and non-addictive personality traits? They don’t seem to be in my peer group at all. The people who seem pretty normal? Can they even be trusted?
It’s not like we don’t all know what we’re supposed to do. It isn’t rocket science. So why don’t we?
No matter how many times I drag my mind back from the million places it has wandered off to, no matter how many times I’ve noted I am just wildly inventing scenarios in my mind and come back to the present, my brain still doesn’t want to stay there. What, I wonder is so wrong with Now that my mind is completely unwilling to spend time there??
And I know I have to keep doing it.
I just want to stop.
Stop spinning.
Stop wondering.
Stop worrying.
Stop crying.
Stop thinking.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
But then I wake up, focus and start again.
I breathe.
In.
Out.
I say thank you.
I read…something…somewhere…and they were talking about post traumatic stress disorder and how there’s an analogous condition. A more hopeful one. Now, I don’t have any real trauma to recover from, I don’t think. If I do, it is even more repressed than I can even imagine, but the idea is intriguing.
The condition they referred to was post traumatic growth. Once you deal with the trauma, you gain strength from having dealt with the experience. You get the tools, you use them to heal and then you turn into a stronger person as a result.
I have the tools.
I have the fucking ladder, so why don’t I shut up and climb?