The Unraveling
It’s not a mid-life crisis
Here we are again. You faithful few who have wondered where I was gone for two days. As expected, working more outside of the home means having to be more disciplined about the daily writing. And, consistent discipline does not come easily to me.
For example, I’ve recently started going twice a week to a personal trainer. My health is terrible — nothing wrong, yet. But, it is coming if I don’t make some changes. Because all my attempts over the years at exercise and diet discipline have failed, I’m trying something I’ve never tried before. Being responsible for someone else’s time and income seems to help me. I want to help others. Helping myself isn’t all that easy for me. So, if I feel like I’m helping someone else with my appointment, then I’m more likely to show up. That doesn’t mean I will show up every time, though. I’ve had five sessions scheduled so far. I’ve already missed one of them. A migraine. Or was it just not wanting to get up and go? Sometimes it is hard for me to really know the difference.
Driving home last night I knew I wouldn’t write when I got in. It was late. I was tired. I didn’t know what to say. And, I started all the crazy-making thought spirals that happen more than I like to admit.
“No one is really reading it anyway.”
“What difference does it make?”
“If I’m going to keep missing days, I may as well just stop doing it.”
For those of you reading this, please know I do not need your words of encouragement. I appreciate them. I really do. I know that sharing such a thing makes it seem like I need a boost, like I need cheering up, like I need someone to tell me, “Keep going!”
It isn’t that I don’t want that. It is simply that I honestly do not mean to ask for that when I say such things.
Another example, I had a terrible night as a stage manager the other night. I truly felt bad and had made several mistakes. I felt like I had let the cast down. None of that is bullshit. Those are real things that happened and real feelings that I felt. And, the cast was so wonderful and kind to send me all kinds of encouraging words after that. But, then, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Oh god, did it sound like I just needed someone to pat me on the back?”
I’ve been doing this a lot lately and it makes me angry. In my twenties, I was constantly worried about what people were thinking about me, about what I had said, about what I had done. I spent so much time looking back on things that I was rarely present with anyone. I thought I had conquered that behavior, but lately I’ve realized it is back. Or, did it never really go away? I walk away from someone and think, “That was a stupid thing to say!”
That’s fine. This is going to happen. It is the dwelling that bothers me. Thinking about it a day later. Wondering about how I appear to the person a week after that. This is crazy-making because there is nothing to be done about it. The dwelling does no one any good at all.
Maybe that is why I worried that my confession to the cast, “I’ve let you down” ended up sounding more like a needy little girl looking for a pat on the head. Once I had written it in the email, once I had said what I needed to say, once I had looked over the mistakes and had a plan, I truly let it go. This time I let it go. It was gone and done with until I started getting such nice words from others.
This sounds so terrible. I can’t make it make sense. I love the nice words. I NEED encouragement. I just don’t want to be a person who beats myself up so much in order to keep anyone else from doing it. I don’t know when I learned that coping mechanism, but I’ve been doing it for a very long time. It may be time to let it go.
Dear Friend sent me a Tik Tok of Brené Brown today. In the midst of writing a sermon about the ways in which we learn from Jacob’s dream about the ladder — that we learn we can never do anything to deserve God’s grace, that we learn that our actions do, in fact, affect God and God’s realm — in the midst of all that, I watched Dr. Brown say that middle age is “not a crisis, but a slow unraveling.”
Holy shit. This is Year 49. I am slowly unraveling.
And that is a good thing.
One of my favorite things to do when I’m knitting is to unravel a piece. It seems nuts. It isn’t that I like when I’ve made a mistake. In fact, I get so frustrated that I’ve made a mistake and have to start again. But, in that frustration, there is something so satisfying about unraveling row after row of knitting and watching it grow smaller and smaller. (I love rolling the yarn into balls too.) Then, you get to start again, and you know this time is going to be better because you already had some practice. It doesn’t mean it will go smoothly, but after the unraveling, you get to begin again. What you create is even better than before.
