Maybe it's the end of the year, I don't know, but last week I made a big discovery about myself: I recognised that I was divided. I saw myself as two people at the same time. It had never been so clear to me before.
Let’s rewind a bit. You know that having a lot of time on my hands makes me anxious (I wrote about it here). I thought with all my being, that this was only momentary, while I look for a new job and clarify my life. But I did a workshop the weekend before last (plus the new moon in Gemini which fell in my 8th house, for you astro-fans) which revealed to me what I couldn't see: all my life I have lived with a certain level of anxiety. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But always there.
I have heard expert people discuss the matter saying that anxiety is an inherent fear of dying or a response to feeling in danger. With all due respect, I don't feel it's a fear of death in my case, but I do feel it could be linked to feeling in danger and the consequent fear of not knowing what's coming. And well, you never really know what's coming, it's just an illusion; however, when you have a clear job and responsibilities, you “more or less know” what's coming each day. If that doesn't exist, a giant void opens that eats you whole. At least that's how I experience it.
The most impressive thing for me was not this per se, but the fact that I was blindfolding myself to that part of me. A blindfold on my eyes, my back completely turned to that other me that was scared to death of what she doesn't know might come. And there I start to cry. And I still want to cry. And I cry as I write this. Because my (now permitted) self-compassion shows me how abandoned I left myself when it came to looking at this shadow. And it hurts. It hurts to see how that fear, that other me, wanted me to listen to it, to look at it, to validate it. But I didn't. I slammed the door in her face and refused to see her. I refused to accept that part of me that does exist. And that it does, in many ways, rule my life.
Looking at it from my ego, I feel that I probably did it because I didn't want to feel weak, inferior, helpless, pathetic. The "overtly anxious" people I know (or knew in many cases, because I didn't tolerate them for long, let's be honest) were emotionally overwhelmed people. Demanding the world to change because they, as babies (that's how I saw them), couldn't take care of themselves. Or work on it at least, as adults. I have been very hard on these people. And so, clearly, I refused to recognise that part of me that identified with them. It was all well covered up under a very thick wall. Because I can seem stoic on the outside. But I have suffered in silence, in solitude, for many things, and I hadn't seen that so much of it was due to an overflowing anxiety that didn't know how to tolerate what I was going through, since I was a little girl. That's when I closed myself off.
So, the electric turbine of (anxious) avoidance has only gained power. It has pushed me to be very productive, very interesting, very active in every way. And, in fact, there is a fine line, because yes: I enjoy very much and it boosts my energy to be doing things and activities that I enjoy. Painting, exercising, reading, socialising, writing, cooking. It's like a drug: give me more, give me more! The problem is from where I do what I do. Is it because I feel in my heart that I want to do it at that moment, or am I running away from me? Consider that I went into burnout even though (or because of?) I was doing yoga and going out for walks almost every day eh. I mean, I didn't run away anyway. And I'm not running away now either.
In this crazy quest to keep busy while living in the emptiness of not knowing where I'm going to end up in my professional life, the dragon's mouth has opened. I am still processing what this means in my life. I am still catching myself in my behaviours and bodily sensations. A good sign: at least now, I can look at myself squarely and I am no longer spending all my time tearing myself away from myself. Clearly, this is just beginning: I am developing the muscle of awareness of my anxiety. To be continued.
How about you, is there any aspect of you that you have discovered in this last season? I read you.
Photo: Image from Love Art. Live Art. in Pixabay