Moving on (almost, sort of, not quite)

Recently we decided to move.  For reasons I now find difficult to recall.

We are moving for the first time since beginning our little family.  Eli has never known a room, other than the nursery we painted in gender neutral cream and green.  Paint colors chosen, not because the baby's sex was ambiguous.  We knew months before painting we were having a boy.  I chose the colors to avoid gender stereotypes.  Ingrained with the firm suspicion that averting blue or pink would allow our child to define himself apart from societal pressure.  Fanciful and ridiculous?  I know.

Photo by Studio Elise

After birthing Eli at the hospital, we decided a home birth would be the best fit for our second child.  More accurately, I insisted a water birth at home was the only way for me.  My husband conceded it was my body, my decision.  I birthed Sofia in our bedroom.  She came into the world, directly into my arms, and immediately fell asleep.

Sometimes I panic and completely forget all the reasons we decided this was a good idea.  I had no idea how attached one could be to a house, until breastfeeding Sofia a few days ago and the tears began to fall.  It completely took me by surprise.  Multiple times I complained about living in one place for too long, insisting I am built for change and excitement.  Now all I want is to stay here forever.  I love this house.  The unfinished molding, and painting that will never be complete.  The boxes my husband built for me in the backyard when I told him we were growing our own produce from now on.  The garden I tended for the first time, as I also cared for the growing child inside me.  The first steps, first words, first "I love you" from my son.

Can a place, a building, a structure be sacred?  All of a sudden, the unwashed dishes, and piling laundry look sacred in this place.  Maybe I'm having a mental breakdown, or just experiencing the natural grieving process.  

Do what you're afraid of doing...over and over and over

This is the advice from my therapist.  I've tried to wrap my head around what that means to me.  In many ways friends and family consider me fearless.  Physically, I feel like nothing is out of reach, and there's nothing to fear.  Last year I delivered my baby girl into this world with my own hands, in my own home.  Six months later I ran my first full marathon.

Despite that confidence, I find myself disabled periodically by anxiety and depression.  It's strange.  When you write things like that, the words seem BIG.  So heady.  But when you live it, the feelings just seem like old friends.  Your life.  The only way you've ever lived.  I never considered myself an anxious person, or a depressed one, until recently.  Sometimes you have no idea how low you've set the bar.

So tonight it struck me across the mind.  What I'm afraid of.  What I avoid at all costs, and thus should do over and over and over.

Feel.  

Of course I'm not alone.  Our society specializes in enabling us to avoid feelings we find intolerable.  Everyone has their preferred method, or several.  Be it TV or alcohol, drugs or church.  We continue to hope, once we come back to consciousness, the feelings will have vanished as quickly as they appeared.  The uninvited guests in our brain and body.

But contrary to popular opinion (mine), emotions are not terrorists of the soul.  They are messengers.  Trying to inform us what works, what doesn't, when something is amiss within us, or outside us.  Ultimately emotions tell us what assumptions and beliefs we hold about ourselves, and the world.  Because of course, each emotion is only a by-product of an assumption, interpretation, or belief (conscious or unconscious).

The TV is off.  Facebook is closed.  My glass of wine has lost its affect.

So I practice feeling.  Allowing these guests to wash over me like waves.  Completely immersed one moment, and receding the next.  Observing, but not judging.  Somehow the feelings are no longer intolerable.  In fact, they never were.  I was intolerant, judgmental.  There is peace in acceptance.

Few people excel at this feeling business.  Most of us confuse one emotion for another, or won't admit to any feeling whatsoever.  We excel at avoidance.  Maybe we should all practice.  Stop avoiding us.  You stop avoiding you.  I stop avoiding me.


Maybe if we tolerate ourselves, we will prove more tolerant of one another.