So there’s a tropical storm here today, August 5, 2020. (Yeah yeah, I know it’s December now, but I started this writing in August and since I’m the best procrastinator that ever lived I’m just finishing it now. Procrastination–a life of tomorrows.)
Anyway, there’s flooding everywhere. Then, just like that, the storm moves away and the flood waters recede, of course not without a mess of trash cans, sheds and pink lawn flamingos relocated down the street.
It’s amazing how the Earth balances itself out so fast. It’s so crazy. I could take a lesson from the Earth on balance. It knows what’s up.
My life was out of balance for quite some time. All my own doing of course. Mostly related to self-care. Genetics plus a job in the restaurant business is a great recipe for borderline functional alcoholism.
For years I told myself, “but I think I drink less than most other people I know so I’m okay right?”
Failed logic.
What does other people’s amount of drinking and partying have to do with mine? They aren’t shoving whiskey down my throat after all. Though sometimes peer pressure makes it feel that way.
But that’s all on me and my will power, or lack thereof. If my co-workers and I ever started a band we were gonna call it No Self-Control. *No Self-Control – now opening this weekend for Going Nowhere!*
So tonight I didn’t have a shift drink after work. I was so proud of myself. Score one for us zero self-control people. Hey, it’s small but it’s an accomplishment nonetheless, I think. It’s a reflection of my new life of balance.
It all started about two years ago when I came to a realization. Honestly, I didn’t so much come to this realization as it came to me, delivered by a medium I went to see with a friend of mine.
After the medium gave me the requisite messages from all the dead people I wanted to hear from, she started talking to me about my life at the present. She said I needed to start taking better care of myself and my passed on loved ones were feeling that way too. They were watching from the other side and saw I needed to make some changes.
I said, “but I’m fine! Yeah, I work a lot, go out even more and drink and smoke even more more but what’s the big deal?” I was never late for work, I paid my bills on time, even managed to fit in some exercise every now and then. I thought I was doing pretty well considering.
Considering.
Considering I thought I was handling things better than most people in my situation. The situation of life after loss. Considering I could have completely gone off the deep end but didn’t (super close though).
Considering relativity. I was doing better relative to other people I knew. So yeah considering all that considering, I thought I was killing it at this life thing.
I was fooling myself.
Your own success or failure is just that, yours, and shouldn’t be compared to anyone else’s.
She then asked me if I was in a relationship and I said no. She said my dead loved ones are working hard behind the scenes to find me a special someone but that’s really only half the battle. She asked me, “what are you doing with your life, like really doing? What do you have to offer someone?”
I didn’t know the answer to either question besides “not much”.
Then, as sarcastically as I’ve ever heard anyone say anything, she said that I was a “real treat”. Wow. And I paid this woman cold hard cash to tell me this! Thanks a lot lady!
Most people think mediums are nuts. Even more people think those that believe in them are even more nuts. Count me as an unashamed, unapologetic, proud nut! But as I sat there in her living room next to her life-size statue of the Virgin Mary and with her other various religious pictures judgmentally staring at me and whispering “tsk tsk”, I realized she was right.
I was a real treat and not in the good way.
I felt her words scorch my soul worse than a burning shot of Malort. This sweet, endearing, crazily honest woman knew what she was talking about. Like I always say, it’s the crazy people who know what’s up.
My life as a “real treat” was a destructive pattern of work, drink, stay out late, wake up and do it all over again. I may have sprinkled in some yoga and hikes on my days off here and there, but for the most part that was my life. I knew I was hurting myself but I guess I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to hear it, especially from a stranger.
I guess I had just stopped caring. I was surviving, wasn’t that enough?
Surviving was a good excuse for the first couple years post life after loss. But now, four years later, I had to get off my butt, stop making excuses and start living.
My life was out of balance because I wasn’t happy. Or was I not happy because my life was out of balance?
Either way, I was at standstill.
Stuck standing still in the middle of surviving, not sure which direction to go towards living. I needed the nudge to get moving, and her words were like a hurricane force wind blowing me towards action so I could finally stop being an idling, stuck-in-a-rut, hapless treat. Her words changed the course of my life. They were like a fingersnap to someone under hypnosis.
Time to wake up!
For the last several years I was wandering around aimlessly not realizing what I was doing to myself. My life was just kinda there and even though I wasn’t exactly sure what to do, I knew what I had to stop doing.
So first on the list, I cut down my drinking, like a lot. (I didn’t totally give it up, hey I’m not that crazy!) James (most of you know him by his full name Jameson) and I broke up. He was like a bad boyfriend you can’t quit. He wasn’t good for me so I had to ditch him.
Next, I stopped smoking cigarettes (I may still vape, hey don’t judge me, I have an addiction!) and then I stopped going out 17 nights a week. (Didn’t know there were that many nights in a week huh? Many of my crazy nights out felt like 2 or 3 in one.)
All of that may sound like baby steps to some, but for zero self-control people like me, they were pretty big. And what happened?
I felt good. Shocking.
Next up, commit more to yoga and hiking, or at least walking outside. Nature always makes you feel better. I also started reading a little (I’m no bookworm but some reading is better than no reading) and doing more activities like camping, fishing, checking out new hiking spots, swimming, all things I used to do but that got lost as I fell deeper and deeper into the rut.
I was in the rut so deep I didn’t even realize I was there anymore.
It’s like all the artwork that hangs in my restaurant. I’m there so much I never even notice it. When did they put that picture up? Um, it’s been there for 6 years Christine. Oops!
The rut was so normal to me that I never even noticed it. And the times that I did catch a glimpse, well, I felt so discouraged that I’d just go out to the bar to forget about it.
Ironically, in the car on the way to our session with the medium, I had mentioned to my friend that my life was like a broken record–work, go out, drink, repeat. But I laughed about it. The medium made me see it was no joke.
For the Universe, balance isn’t a joke. It’s a necessity.
You can see this all around you. Makes me think of the nature preserve right down the street from me that I frequently walk in. There are many signs posted there with information about the controlled burns they periodically do. Burning sounds bad but it actually helps the health of the preserve, otherwise invasive species would take over and general overgrowth would drown out the land. Yes, people create the burns, but it’s because of us people that nature needs a little help sometimes to restore equilibrium.
We humans are making the world out of balance. We bring in invasive species, we create urban sprawl that chokes out natural areas and we treat the Earth like a giant garbage can. And don’t even get me started on global warming. The Earth is heating up because it can’t keep up with humans’ destructive ways tilting it out of balance.
*Sidenote rant: while we’re on the subject of the environment, can we please skip the plastic bags people! Ugh! I HATE when people at Wawa or any store ask for a bag for like their single bottle of Coke. Do you really need an entire bag to carry your soda out of the store? C’mon! Sorry, that shit pisses me off.
Anyway, balance = health. Health of the Earth and health within each of us. Why do we need this balance within ourselves? We need it for both our physical and mental well-being.
Too much of anything isn’t good as anyone who’s ever had a cold headache from delicious ice-cream will tell you. Your brain says put it down! And if you don’t listen to your brain, you might want to listen to your cholesterol numbers at your next check-up. Someway, somehow, the universe will let you know if something is out of equilibrium.
I needed a medium to point out to me just how much my life was teetering off the fence of well-being. I knew my life needed some restructuring but I didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to see what the Universe had tried to tell me through countless headaches (unfortunately from hangovers and not ice cream), empty pockets and an overall dull depression that never seemed to lift. These were all signs that I ignored.
It took messages from an entire different plane of existence for me to finally listen.
I had to really internalize this message of balance. So after taking the medium’s advice and making the necessary changes, the more I did them, the more routine and normal they became.
Now I’m no Mormon, nun or goody-two-shoes by any means, but I knew I had to rein things in a bit and take control of my behavior instead of it controlling me. I had been afraid to give up the balls-to-the-wall, but-I’m-hurting-so-it’s-okay-to-be-a-mess lifestyle because I thought, “this is just what I do”. I’m the hard drinking, hard partying, never say no to an outing person. I was like that pre-tragedy after all. This is who I am!
No, it wasn’t. That was my behavior which was the product of my unhappiness. Many, many years of unhappiness as I look back now. Add in a crippling, tragic loss and my self-destructive behavior just became even more exacerbated and more falsely legitimized.
I was afraid to change. Afraid because maintaining a healthy, productive, “normalish” life seemed too hard.
It’s just like when I was younger in gymnastics class. Oh, the dreaded balance beam. Most of us in class never even wanted to work on balance beam practice because all the other stuff was just way more fun–jumping into a ball pit, doing somersaults and cartwheels on the floor, flying in the air on the trampoline. The balance beam not so much. The balance beam took the most work, concentration, and focus.
I did eventually learn to do a cartwheel on a balance beam, of course not before falling off like a thousand times. I never fully mastered that narrow, unforgiving beam, but hey, it was something. Hard yes, but not impossible.
I sometimes think about other parts of my life that could use a balance tune-up, especially the ones that seem too difficult to tackle. One thing that is particularly hard for me to get a hold on is thinking too much. I’m sure all you overanalyzers out there can relate.
Does everything have to mean something? Even writing this blog, does every piece have to have some big monumental message? Can’t I just write something for the sake of it?
I haven’t written anything in a while because I overthought all my ideas and abandoned expanding on them. This piece itself probably needs to be more balanced. Great, now I’m overthinking that. Ugh!
All this overthinking though reminds me of the time a few summers ago when my friends and I went pool hopping. Yep, I was a 40-something-year-old pool hopper. I know what you’re thinking. Well so what, it was fun! I didn’t overthink hopping in a pool that night, I just did it. It was great (because we didn’t get caught), and we still laugh about that night to this day.
I have that memory because it was something I just did without my usual, incessant overanalyzation. I like that. I need to do more of that. By that I mean analyzing less, not pool hopping. Though never say never.
So have you ever thought about ways in which your own life is out of balance?
Do you work too much? Play too much?
Drink too much? Drink too little? (Yeah, that’s a thing. Go out and live a little!)
Do you talk too much? Listen too much? (You have a voice too!)
Are you too selfish? Too giving?
Do you like to be alone too much? Not enough? (Some people have a lot of trouble being alone.)
Do you love too little? Love too much?
We all have an inside yearning for balance even if we don’t realize it. I don’t eat much red meat at all but some days I oddly find myself craving a steak. I don’t even really like steak. What the hell is that about? Aha, my iron levels are probably low. See, your body tells you what you need.
So does your mind, if you listen.
My overthinking is so loud at times I can’t hear what my mind is really trying to tell me underneath all the noise. It’s saying chill out! Not everything has to be MONUMENTAL.
Some things can just be and that’s okay.
I spend so much time thinking about making my life purposeful and making the most of my time that too much time goes by and then I feel like I wasted that time thinking. Phew. How exasperatingly ironic.
So how exactly do you rebalance things that pushed you so far out of balance you now feel like you’re in the movie 2012 and the north and south poles of your life have shifted? How do you fix a disaster?
Well if John Cusack is too busy to help you that day, guess you just gotta do it yourself.
A message my yoga instructor gave us in class the other day may give some insight on how to go about this. Her main message centered around the word “motivation”. It made me think how can we get motivated and stay motivated to remain on a balanced path and not fall off into a chasm of self-destruction?
She summed it up in one sentence: motivation requires consistency and from consistency comes mastery. So fucking true.
I still mess up from time to time and fall off, hey we all do. Just try not to beat yourself up too much if you falter. Just get up and try again.
Be consistent, that’s all we can do. Finishing this piece that I started in freaking August is the start of more consistency for me.
Balance restored, for today at least. Now time to go eat some steak and ice cream.
CM
12/4/20
