Heart versus head

Following your gut is so much easier when you're young, the consequences of failing aren't as life altering, and you haven't had as much negative reinforcement to give you an aversion to making huge leaps and daring moves.

At risk of sounding like Verdi the snake, I really did used to follow my heart, and it took me to some wonderful places. If it took me someplace I didn't want to be, I'd stew about it for a while and then start to sort of daydream myself into a better story.

Now of course it's all so different. One bad move I made in 2005 had pretty disastrous consequences. It started when I was in a casual long distance relationship and I started to get this feeling that "adults" settled down, put down roots and committed. It's almost as if I felt like I'd been so lucky in my single parent life, had done so many awesome things, that I was somehow supposed to... quit while I was ahead? Maybe that, and then also like... I was being immature by being single. Like being happy and following my heart, which while up until then had been productive and successful, was actually a sign of immaturity and a lack of development. I felt like I was always eating life dessert and never eating my life vegetables. 

And I did love the guy I was in the long distance relationship with, and I was with him at a time when these thoughts were really plaguing me. My heart was telling me that I was happy and excited each day as a single mother, and this was how I should try to keep my life as long as humanly possible. And then my head was arguing that I was being childish and spoiled, and "at some point" there should be a home and yard and man and stability, so I should settle down with the long distance guy. 

And don't get me wrong - there was something attractive about the thought of stability that came from settling down. But it was only attractive, in my experience, as a way station or a resting place. A settled relationship seemed like a place to recharge in comfort before I got back to the things I'd rather be doing. And I couldn't picture a man who would be willing to love me, live with me, be my anchor and comfort - but also let me travel, have adventures and choose my own path. I've never been in close proximity to a relationship that worked that way. And long distance guy didn't fit that mold in the least. He wanted a wife that stayed in place.

After a year of heart (happy single!) versus head (I should settle down), I opted for settling down with the long distance guy. I rationalized that in a way I was following my heart by being with him - in some kind of twisted way, if I looked at it from a certain angle and didn't look too closely - my heart might be craving stability. Only there were practical issues - some blended family hurdles - and so we settled uneasily on some kind of forced limbo where I moved halfway closer to him geographically. It was miserable. I was miserable. 

I settled for a job at 'fabulously important place', which I hated, and moved into a house that felt like 'not my house', and settled on a few more life choices for the good of the relationship that made me feel like a trapped rat. I continued to rationalize that I was doing all of this incredibly unlikeable stuff in order to get to the ultimate place that would (if I didn't look too closely at it) make me truly happy (sort of) - which was the relationship and the stability it would bring. 

And then of course the relationship dissolved out from under me, and there was no ultimate goal anymore to the trapped miserable place I found myself. 

After that came months of being so lost, I couldn't even articulate to anyone how lost I was. I was living in a beautiful place, I was working at a place that would look phenomenal on my CV. I was given back my freedom to move freely around the planet. Only I was completely frozen.

For the first time in my life I had spent years building up a life for myself that was absolutely and totally WRONG for me. I had completely failed. I had (I thought) listened to my heart and hit a brick wall in a dark alley going 100 miles an hour. I found myself completely unable to make even the smallest decision for myself after that. I couldn't make eye contact with people in the grocery store. I couldn't make a decision on whether or not to go on a weekend camping trip, let alone jet myself and Ky to some other country. I felt like... I don't know, like going out on a limb was the most dangerous thing in the world. And when making eye contact with the cashier in a store suddenly feels like going out on a limb, that's a troublesome place to find yourself. 

Never in my life have I felt so stuck at the bottom of a well. Then followed a domino effect of bad decisions knocking into worse ones, toppling everything along my path. It was a horrible time in my life. I no longer trusted my instincts. I no longer trusted my life. And - because I'd spent so long convincing myself that the "settling down" plans I had been making were the plans of a mature adult, I felt like a life failure at maturity and adulthood. And I felt like I was somehow obligated to keep pressing on that path, but it was so counter to my real needs that I was always lost and churning inside.

Part of empty nesting for me is trying to get in touch with my gut instincts again. I've been trying for years, but so much fear has built up that it's been hard for me to tell the difference between my gut telling me something is wrong for me, and my fear holding me back from something good for me, giving me a false stop sign. 

Because going with your gut sometimes is scary. It's scary, exhilarating and challenging. And figuring out if you're that kind of scared - the kind that precedes an awesome, terrifying, exhilarating choice... or the "red flag warning" kind of scared that tells you not to do something ultimately bad for you - is really hard when you're not tuned in to the differences. Your mind can convince you either kind of fear is the other. I've been stuck in that tug of war for way too long.

I've always envisioned having a core of things that are incredibly important to me. Things I genuinely love, things I genuinely believe in. Those form the heart of me. Anything I do that keeps close to that heart, that stems from it genuinely and never strays too far, are the right things for me. Sometimes I end up traveling so far from my core, doing something I dislike, thinking that where I'm going is ultimately going to return and touch the core again, and that I can just "bear with it" for the greater good, etc etc - that never works. I get so far out that I'm miserable. And I can no longer remember why I thought running so far away would bring me closer. And the farther I go, the less I can remember the way back, the less I can hear and feel that core. It's a terrible place to be. 

Working back to it is very hard. And over and over I have to remind myself that when I get close to it again it will be scary. But it's a different kind of scary than being far away is. I have to be careful and re-learn how to tell the difference.

Becoming a better person

That sounds unbelievably trite, but I'm not sure how else to phrase it without new agey 'self improvement' language. At its heart, the issue is that at 40, I'm so sick of the things I'm not good at. I'm tired of making the same mistakes, over and over. I know what my big failings are - or at least I have a good idea of the things I keep tripping over, repeatedly, and the things that always seem to be standing in my way.

Every few years I do this sort of life-level spring cleaning. I use Freemind to map out all of my shortcomings, and then I have "branches" and "clouds" to group them and form solutions. I seek help from professionals for those failings that seem fixable with help, and I work diligently on my own to fix the things that only I can come to terms with.

Not body image. Not "becoming a better housekeeper" or "learning harmonica, once and for all" - but the big things in life. Developing friendships. Giving energy to the people who matter to me the most. Giving my own needs equal weight in decisions. Being warmer, more open, less shuttered in my heart. Following through when I start to reach a place that makes me happy, or gives me peace. Allowing good things to happen with open acceptance. Communicating. Admitting to myself what I truly want, what honestly brings me peace and happiness, rather than assessing my life choices from the perspective of an ex boyfriend, my mother, a coworker who barely knows me. 

I feel like I fill my life up with jobs, work, extra interests, travel, planning travel, planning jobs, planning out ways to enhance my extra interests, and even to some extent running - all to avoid sitting quietly and looking at each of my weaknesses. Thinking about their impact on my life. Deciding to change things, or to accept them. 

During the years when I do my "spring cleaning" I often use my love of hard work as a way to, strangely, avoid the hard work of sitting still with my thoughts. I come from a blue collar family. There is hardly a higher compliment than to call someone a hard worker. And hard work, to my family, means constant tangible busy-ness. Looking at two options for how to spend your next hour and choosing the least sedentary. Often this means choosing the least appealing option. 

When I have the chance to sit still and look at my thoughts, my failings, my feelings about my failings, and tracing them to how they affected my life and evaluating whether I can live with those effects - or, alternatively - to make lists, source self-help books and counselors, create a task list of things to do that can solve each problem in turn, then download productivity software that allows me to track my progress and remain accountable on each area... well, I always opt for the latter course of action. 

I once spent an entire Saturday installing black foam board panels in a checkerboard line marching around my bedroom walls, each with a pinned on title: SELF, HOME, WORK, COMMUNICATION, TO-DO, and then under each title, an ongoing list of action items that were either on the "complete" side or "incomplete", so that each morning my first view would be of the progress I'd made (or had not made) and an instant check-in with myself to start my day. This resulted in stomach aches each morning and averting my eyes so they would never, ever hit one of the boards on my bedroom wall - then complete avoidance of my bedroom as a whole. 

But the act of buying the foam boards and nailing them up onto the wall and writing out the cards was very satisfying, and made me feel like I was "working hard" to fix myself. I was hammering, I was running errands, I was taking charge. Only I really wasn't.

For the rest of this month I'd like to work on "becoming a better person" by allowing myself time to sit and think about the things I'm struggling with. I don't completely discount talking to professionals if that's what seems the best course, or writing lists if I should find myself needing to do more than one thing, but that I'll do that only after some serious, quiet contemplation of the place I find myself, and where I'd like to find myself instead. 

(I wrote that and immediately felt myself getting excited about finding the perfect place to sit and quietly contemplate, what I might use to help me relax [pillow? blanket? yoga pants? candle?] ---- no no no. Just sitting still. Just whenever I have time, just in a quiet place and just in whatever I'm wearing, feeling and smelling at the moment.)

Hmm.

Running and depression

I started running in 2011 when I was working at a high-intensity, world renowned, much sought-after Institute with such atrocious working conditions that mystery illnesses and drinking problems (my own on both counts included) were practically part of the working culture. I used to get stomach cramps on the stairs on the way up to my workspace, and the particular smell of the hallways that I'd initially loved - an old-world museum storage room smell - started triggering my gag reflex. 

Every few months I'd go to my doctor asking for blood tests, sure that I had a thyroid problem. My skin was terminally dry, my hair was so thin I could feel my scalp with my fingers in even the thickest parts and my energy level was zilch. My blood tests were all normal though, and he'd always very kindly and gently suggest that maybe I was experiencing stress, and that a healthy way to find out would be to combine regular exercise with a wise and caring person to talk to, either professionally or casually. I would always tell him I had no time for (nor interest in) therapy and exercise, and I'd go about my exact same business again, only to return a few months later thinking that I might have a different metabolic disorder. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

Eventually my contract at the high intensity famous place came to an end, and by then I was in such bad shape physically and emotionally that I pretty much just embraced unemployment with absolute relief. Ky and I traveled to Europe for a few weeks and I absolutely reveled in having no cell service, no email emergencies, no stomach pains and nausea hanging like a pig-pen cloud around me. 

But then as so many other have discovered during times of unemployment, what starts out to be the best vacation of your life at some point turns into a sort of keening hopelessness as you lose even the unlikeable scaffold of schedule, and in my case my sense of myself as a useful human being. Yes, I was still a mother, a girlfriend, a daughter, a sister, a volunteer. But as someone who had always defined myself partly as a mother and partly as someone called to my particular profession, I felt like I'd lost half my identity. 

I drank too much and despaired quite a bit. A new kind of depression settled in as I realized that my much hated job and unemployment were two very unlikeable sides of the employment spectrum and I would very much like to be somewhere in the more agreeable center. Only I was too mired in depression to find the energy to get there. 

This is when I started running. Maybe it was the ghost of my former doctor's voice telling me that exercise would help me work out my issues in a healthy way. Maybe it was reading something about a happy person running. Maybe it was the desire to not have Ky see me sitting on the couch after school, still in my pj's, and instead to see a mother who was actively engaged in some seemingly useful activity. 

Whatever sparked it, I started running because I was depressed and I was desperate for some tangible accomplishment in my life. If I ran, I had done something with my day. If I ran 2 miles, I had tackled an obstacle that I thought was unachievable the week before. If I ran, I had something to talk to Ky about after school. "Oh, I went for a run and I saw this HUGE osprey catch a fish!"  I found some running message boards and joined them for a sense of community that I desperately needed. Often during my run was the only time I made eye contact with another adult in the course of my day. It gave me a purpose. 

I didn't enjoy running. I wasn't any good at it, and in the first couple of months I only enjoyed the feeling of being finished with a run for the day. But at some point, I think when my runs started taking a solid 45 minutes or so, something finally kicked in and I began looking forward to the hour I had to sort out problems, think of solutions, be somewhat honest with myself about where my life was going. Or to zone out and fantasize about what my life would look like if it were different, better. Sometimes I jammed in earphones and blasted music from a better time in my life. Sometimes I daydreamed. Sometimes I carefully brought out the real, painful issues in my life and examined them in bits and pieces, using the run-generated endorphins to smooth the rough edges. 

I stopped drinking as much, because it ruined the next day's run if I was dehydrated. I started gaining a tiny, small amount of confidence as I improved. I started signing up for 5K's and ultimately half marathons to gain some small amount of community. I never went to races with anyone, and I rarely spoke to anyone while I was at one, but just running in a crowd felt like company and community to me.

I made some huge decisions while running, and ultimately my life changed quite a bit. I stopped needing to run to get away from my desperation, and started needing to run as mind-maintenance. 

But something in the last year started going south again. Lately my runs have felt more like the forced march they used to feel like. I need them for emotional triage once again, and each one is an emotional roller coaster once again. I wish I didn't find myself back in this dark head space again. I wish I was joyfully running along the road each day out of happiness and an overabundance of energy, but I'm not. Not consistently. But I'm glad that at least this time I have a template for getting back to that good place in my head. I don't have to reinvent the wheel - I can use it as the tool it is, hard as that is to accomplish.

When I went running today I found myself taking an old running route, from the "dark times", from the times my head was in a bad place and 5 miles was the longest run I could imagine. Today even felt like that as I plodded along. Like 5 miles was a long, long distance and my head needed to be convinced to stick with it when it was telling my body to just stop, just walk, just lean on a tree and let myself fall apart. I did ultimately do that, in the park across the street from my house, against the tree I've run past several times a week for the last few years. 

But even as I did that, I was still grateful for the endorphin-softened fall and the knowledge that I can run it out again tomorrow, and the next day, until my heart and head catch back up with my body and my life can make it back to that good place again.