mostly pretty ok

and what that actually means

Someone asked me yesterday how I’ve been and I said mostly pretty ok because that’s mostly pretty true and how do you get into how you actually are and how do you get into why you are how you actually are and how do you do the there is too much let me sum up about the entirety of what actually is happening? 

And nobody really talks about how things actually are anyway? To a degree maybe and with certain people more than others yeah, but still it’s a lot.

And that’s the tricky thing too. I am mostly pretty ok. However. There is a lot. 

My life today looks different in nearly every single way than what it was 5 years ago. Even more so than what it was 8 years ago. Even 3 years ago! 

The growth has been rapid.

And alarming for some, I know it. It’s ok.

Let me start this by stating that I am the most solid, the most content, the most secure emotionally, the most grounded, the happiest internally, the most confident, the most healed capable feeling version of myself that I have ever been.

And still - I have SO MUCH to learn.

So if you’ve wondered what happened, how I’ve been, I am still mostly pretty okay. But here’s part of what happened because I need to get it out of me. 

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I ran again a few days ago for the first time in a long time. 

It bent time and exposed possibility. It was proof and potential and difficult. It was good. This isn’t about running, I’ll write more about running plenty many other times don’t worry. 

After my run, I walked the length of the extra large sidewalk that is in the middle of my neighborhood. I felt all the versions of me that have been running, in the midst of a run, all at the same time. It was heavy. It made me cry. It was interesting. To see the me that ran the trails all over the hills in Woodside for hours at a time every day, sometimes twice a day as a teenager, to know that she survived and what was coming, to be also me right now to know what I’ve survived, am in the middle of, and will still survive. 

It was significant. 

It was a self love and acceptance I don’t really have words for yet. It was a combining, an aligning, a tenderness. 

It helped me know I need to move through some things more actively.

It’s time to get going again. 

I woke up to really frustrating awful things and sat on the floor in the shower this morning. I haven’t done that in a long long time. If you’ve had to do that you might understand. 

It’s not like an insert Tobias Funke meme shower cry, as amusing and perfect as that can be at the right time, this was a real I’m on the floor trying to wash as proof that time passes because the water goes from the shower head and down my back to the drain and so I continue also to exist. 

It’s to know that my body holds the rest of me and it needs to be sat down for a minute, chin on my knees, knees held by my arms. 

It’s the pelting of the water on your back, on my shoulders that is a replacement for physical contact because your nervous system is trained for danger and it is hard to accept someone into your space and so you don’t have many people in your spaces and the ones that are there are very much wanted but this isn’t the time for company anyway and so the water will work and will push on your skin for the moments you need it to.

Also, it’s easier to cry when there’s already water around and it’s easier to not be heard doing so when the shower is on and your sat on the floor in the middle of it. 

Sometimes you just need to and this morning I needed to. 

I felt it and was scared it was going to turn into more.

That’s the thing about despair - once you’ve had some time in the depths of the basement of that house and know there are even lower crawl spaces beneath what you thought was the bottom, it is then always somewhere your mind can return to. 

I didn’t this time - which is a massive intangible positive thing. 

I had my first panic attack when I was in high school. I thought I was going to implode and cried so hard I thought I was going to drown too. It was horrible. I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t stop crying, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t let go of myself, I couldn’t stop shaking, I couldn’t anything. I had no control of my mind, of my body, of anything. 

I didn’t understand what was happening but that didn’t matter because it was happening anyway. 

Things happen and don’t require you to understand them they just happen. 

I didn’t understand the events that prompted the panic attack and I didn’t know how to handle it. It took me in a way I had never experienced before. It’s happened a few times since but not for at least a year. Also progress.

Anyway I got out of the shower this morning itching to write some things down. Why? Not for you. Not for you either. 

Not to explain or prove anything but just to get it the fuck out of me. 

Last time here, I wrote about the goodness of those May days in middle school.

I mentioned that in high school things changed quickly. 

This is a little bit about that. And a little bit not. It’s about rebuilding, figuring out, and some things that happened.

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I’ve never written something this vulnerable and personal and shared it before. This one required a lot of me but was necessary to write. It’s behind a paywall because of that. Your support (even in a free subscription) means so much to me. This one is very long and goes deep into me and if you choose to come along, I’m so so grateful for your presence. But no worries if not - whimsy is coming next time.

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