Liminal Spaces

I’ve been sitting down to write about what I’ve been consuming media wise and immediately waxing into the most dramatic options possible- so that means it’s time for me to lighten things up and let some of these burdens go. What an absolute pressure cooker of a summer, my head has been pounding with new changes and developments to my routines surrounding creativity and self expression. Even as I sit here, I’ve been awake all night with nightmares and waking up to the now-familiar anxious stomach pain and restlessness that I thought I had resolved and yet, there remains more work to be done. My body has a strong unconscious response to being exposed, to any degree, to things that hold the possibility of hurting me. Despite that reality, I've also got to increase my window of tolerance and there's only one way to properly do that. I’m thinking too much as a result, each cognitive thread spinning out on black ice before I slam headfirst into an exhausted sleep by the end of the day. 

What has kept me going is team Norway, specifically Erling Haaland’s deeply relaxing and grounding energy, and trying to find and embrace some gentler media. Watching heavy things feels odious, and this week I have been refusing books altogether because I am incapable of being lighthearted when my nose is shoved into very heavy themes that weave themselves into a structure for me to obsess over. Managing that difference between love and obsession, the space between control and faith has been tough for me, and as I work that axis I am trying to really just find more reasons to belly laugh as my home life is taking a turn for the serious again in the background. 

Of course I do not speak about these things on stream, or even in my social media posts, but my immediate family is going through a rather large upheaval right now, which is not a small thing. It is the first time in years I am staring some of the old demons of my family in the face again, and this time I am fighting to keep my headspace buoyant instead of sinking into the muck and becoming depressed about what is required of me. Everything that I have in me is fighting right now to find pockets of joy, pockets and moments of lighthearted ease, and my reading choices reflect as much.

Books have been scarce for the moment, because simply put my head is too heavy and loud, and my mental headspace and personal boundaries need tending to. The frustration that I am bumping into on an almost daily basis has me seeking out pockets of laughter, anything into which I can escape that does not feel like a burden. There is a great deal of challenge woven into this dynamic for me as I remember times before where I was capable of more carefree behavior- it's a struggle not to miss and resent it in this season.

However, this is a season. Not a permanent one, not a period of forever stuck-ness, but simply my wheels being lodged firmly in the mud and it requires patience. Although I would love to race ahead and tell you that it will all work out fine, the deepest work I can do right now is to accept the place and space that I'm at in this process.

So to answer all of the questions I seem to keep getting weekly:

• no I am not seeing anyone or trying to

• no I am not moving

• no I am not working a new job

• no I am not having a mental breakdown any more than usual

• no I am not forgetting the health stuff

• no Riot the malinois is not here yet

• no there are no issues with the friend group

I am simply dealing with life, with its ebbs and flows and old stuff from a decade ago that needs to get handled and processed in a mature fashion.