Avoidance

My week started out with a bang, emotionally speaking. Old demons reared up big and cold and angry, startling me out of the sense of safety I had been carefully building around myself over the last couple of months. I watched myself be snuck up on by and struck by the deep, dark feelings I’ve been stuffing in the emotional basement (and I thought I locked up and threw away the key!) The feelings of self-loathing and guilt and inadequacy were so strong and terrifying, that I felt like I didn’t even have the capacity to face them. I panicked, crawled deep into my own mental cave, and lay there shivering. As I sat with the feelings, it became clear to me they were just the surface. In fact, they were compounded by a feeling of total and utter powerlessness. Not only am I a terrible, awful, unlovable person… but there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Lucky for me, the last month and a half has seen a lot of late nights filled with self-work, and during this time I’ve become hyper-aware of a pattern within me of avoidance. I’m used to being able to sit with my emotions and converse with them and gain insight, but recently I’ve realized that there are certain things that I won’t go near with a ten-foot pole. And when I finally became aware of this and actually tried to go near them… I wouldn’t let myself. Holy shit have I built up some barriers, guys. My mind would rather think about or focus on anything else. It actually shocked me how much of an effort this aspect of myself was putting into keeping me from getting in and having a look around, absolutely hell bent on protecting me from what’s inside: a figurative mama bear responding to a deadly threat and willing to stop at nothing.

As I kept slipping back into old patterns, I began also stopping more to watch myself. My gut instinct to ask far too many “why?” questions (that have no real answers) and go swimming in a whirlpool of worthlessness and powerlessness, were punctuated by many moments of awareness and questioning. I started to have a different conversation with myself. I began thinking things like, “Tien, I know you feel powerless. And you are in this situation. But you need to remember that the reason you are powerless is (first of all, NOT because you are just a shit person who deserves misery, but) because you’ve created this experience for yourself. It’s a vicious cycle of feel powerless –> experience powerlessness –> feel powerless –> experience powerlessness –> feel powerless…. and on and on it goes. Somewhere along the line, if you want that to change, you have to change. And that doesn’t mean running from feeling powerless or hating that aspect of yourself, but loving and accepting it. More than anything, though, you need to be willing to change. You have to be willing to look at it differently. You have to be willing to make different choices, take different actions.”

So that’s what I’m doing. And it’s fucking terrifying.

For a long time, I’ve been taking baby steps in the direction towards being brave and vulnerable and putting myself out there. This blog is one of those baby steps. But let’s be real here: I’ve been standing at the edge of the pool, dipping my toe in… maybe the top of my foot. Brrrr!!! That’s freezing! No fucking way! Okay, {pat on the back} you PUT that toe in. Good for you! Nope, that’s enough. Ahh, back to my safe place. Maybe I’ll try again later. After I eat a cupcake. Yum… cupcake.

Dude… fuck cupcakes. Seriously. I’m tired of hiding from myself, distracting myself. I’m getting NOWHERE. I’m done with this damn forest that I’ve been wandering around in. I’m ready for a change of scenery. I’m never going to get anywhere if I keep playing small.

So here’s the thing, guys. I have this really super cool project that I’ve been working on for a while now but I can’t bring myself to even finish because I feel like I’m unable to put myself out there in order to share it with others. I keep getting triggered to the point of being unable to move forward. But I’m so glad, because it’s forced me to stop and work on myself first. I’m getting more out of working on myself now than I think I ever have in all my life. I’m choosing to really take a long, deep look at myself to better understand why I’ve spent my whole life being so affected by the judgments and opinions of other people. And I don’t think I’m anywhere near the heart of it but for the first time in a long time, pieces of the picture are starting to become clearer.

Much more to come on this.

In the meantime, I’m playing this love song, from me to me. You can find me slow dancing with my darkness.

Questioning

I love having a better understanding of myself. I’m always analyzing my thoughts, my motives. When I’m feeling something I don’t like or don’t understand I will sit with myself, and ask myself a hundred different questions. Question after question after question. And I do my best to answer them all honestly. It’s the most incredible feeling when you hit on the right question, asked just the right way in that it compels a deeply real answer, shaken up from depths you didn’t know existed.

It’s kind of remarkable how much better I understand myself each year that passes. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say I have some perfect understanding of myself. Far from it. The more time goes by, the more I realize how little I know, and I fucking love it. It just amazes me how far I’ve come. I look back on younger Tien and I can care about her, understand her, forgive her… it doesn’t mean I like her. That’s okay though. I really do like the person that I’ve become, for the most part. This cool tree is rooted in that crazy past, so there you go. I can’t hate her too much; she is me. I wouldn’t exist now as I am without her.

I’ve been feeling that old depression rearing up again inside of me and I’ve been attempting to be with it differently, in order to understand it more fully. I finally had a huge breakthrough today. A lot of it comes from feeling like I made a wrong turn somewhere in my life, that I somehow lost my path and can’t find my way back to it. I’ve been feeling like a failure because I had all of these big visions for how I wanted my life to go, and my life looks nothing like any of that.

I cannot believe it took me this long to realize something. Most of those big dreams aren’t mine. It’s almost hilarious the more I think about it.

The winding path that I took to arrive at this conclusion started with the thought that I felt like my life was meaningless. And I started asking myself what would make it meaningful, and I realized all of the old answers to that question didn’t fit any more. I’m so tired of the old clichées: “I want to make a difference in others lives. I want to add beauty to the world.” The world is plenty beautiful and it has a life of its own. It doesn’t need me or anyone else to “make it better.” It will constantly continue to get better simply by virtue of it existing. It’s written into the DNA of the cosmos.

Everyone always talks about how the most meaningful thing you can do in life is “help other people.” I’ve always bought into that and believed it. But throughout my entire life, every time I go to “help people”, coming from the very best of intentions, life always gently (and occasionally not so gently) shows me that I don’t have this ability. No one does. No person can ever help another. We are all learning how to help ourselves and sometimes we get lucky and get to be the vessel that contributes to someone’s growth, but that isn’t us. And walking around thinking you have answers or resources that will help people is just self-aggrandizement. If you truly care about other people, the best thing you can do is learn to help yourself. Grow yourself into the person that you want to be. Embody the things that you believe and live authentically. That’s it. And of course, show up in life and take actions that are in alignment with that.

That was when I was struck by a heavy reminder that human beings truly are just meaning-making machines. Meaning is whatever we want it to be, and whatever we make it. Life may have solid lines, but it’s a coloring book; we can fill in the blanks with any color combination we choose. That’s why we like being around certain people — we love the meaning that they’ve built up around themselves and it feels good to step into their world. So with that as a guide, I asked myself: “if I can make my life mean whatever I want, what would be the most fun? What would make me the most happy?”

I took a little journey back through all of the wishes and dreams I’ve had throughout my life, and asked myself: which ones felt the most magical, the most meaningful?

My answers shocked me. I’m a remarkably simple person, driven almost entirely by the simple pleasures of life. Beautiful scenery, good food, excellent company, delightful music, things that make me stop and question or think. I want such little things: big starry skies on warm summer nights, great loud long belly laughs, wind in my face, purring, kisses, saltwater, a deeper connection with others. That’s all I want. Beautiful moments. Little pleasures.

Everything else I thought I wanted was just a convoluted, watered down version that was dressed up to seem bigger and grander than it actually could ever be. Paper-thin. How did I not recognize this sooner? It’s one of those lies that you’ve told yourself for so long you forget to even question it. Ever since I was a kid, people handed me these ideas of who I was supposed to become. I heard it so much and from so many different people, it became true for me. Maybe that life wasn’t even a terrible thing to want, back then. It made sense. But as I grew up and outgrew those dreams, I clung to them tightly because I never knew life without them. My identity has been wrapped up in what others wanted and expected for me.

Then, when I found myself avoiding those things which I said I wanted, I chalked it all up to one excuse: fear. And yes, fear and I definitely have an unhealthy relationship. I won’t even try to deny that. But it always seemed crazy to me that fear could hold me back for so long in the way that it has. It just didn’t seem right. I still can’t believe it took me so long to realize I’ve been avoiding it because I don’t want it. It’s not me. The dreams and wishes of my past are old ghosts that just need to be put to rest.

Wow. I really don’t have to chase after any of that crap any more. What a heavy burden, lifted from my shoulders. Letting all of that go, I almost feel weightless in comparison. (I’m not, but wow!) I just want to experience freedom and joy and beauty in simple, beautiful moments, scattered through life. They are my greatest pleasure. Everything else is just mind clutter.

It’s been a long time since I felt this free. I’ve made peace with so many of my demons; we have tea all the time now. Tea might end with the occasional impromptu wrestling match, but I don’t bar down the door and try to keep them at bay any more. I invite them in and we talk. Each of them has keys to new and mysterious doors that keep appearing inside of my psyche and sometimes they let me borrow those keys. Between that and running, I feel amazing.

Questions are powerful. But the right questions…. the right questions are fucking magic.

Every Day is Fresh, With No Mistakes in it... Yet

I’ve always kind of thought New Year’s resolutions were a bit of a joke. In a similar way that New Year’s Eve is “amateur night” when all the people that don’t normally drink and drive hit the roads in full force, it’s the same way with resolutions; people who don’t normally decide to make life-altering changes are all making commitments that they can’t keep.

Not that I’m necessarily a humbug about it; I mean, I’ll go out and celebrate. But it’s just not my holiday. 11:59 PM on December 31, 2017 feels quite the same to me as 12:01 AM January 1, 2018. The calendar is just a construct of human beings that love to quantify things, and New Year’s resolutions are just an excuse to get sentimental and feel guilty about the promises you’ve made in years past that you didn’t keep, then get fired up to make more promises that you probably won’t keep, either. A neverending loop of disappointment.

And drinking. It’s also an excuse for that, too.

I know I sound terribly pessimistic, and I don’t mean to be. If some people love the freshness that comes with a new year and can use that as an excuse to actually make changes and improve their life, who am I to rain all over that? More power to them.

I think I just get tired of all the hubbub around something that generally has a low success rate. To be fair, that also has something to do with my frustration with people not following through with what they say they are going to, and the fact that many don’t even care that their word doesn’t mean anything anymore. So when people ask me if I made any New Year’s resolutions, I say no. No I have not. And I will not. I only say I’m going to do something when I actually plan on doing it. I don’t need a “fresh start” to decide I want to accomplish something. On a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of February, if I want to do something, I’ll make time to do it. And if I don’t, I never really wanted it badly enough, now did I?

Reading through friends posts on Facebook has been a mixture of emotions. Some people I know have had a really hard year, and I can sympathize with that. My year has been amazing, but in years past, I’ve had my share of really trying experiences so while I may not be able to relate to them completely, I am a close friend of heartache and struggle. On the flip side, I have friends that I watched travel all over the world this year or do other things that I always wanted to do, and I feel a sharp pang of jealousy. Friends who have had a truly spectacular year and experienced profound things. My heart hurts because I want some of those things too, and yet I recognize not chasing after them was my own choice. The funny thing is, even in spite of the fact that there are so many things I want (that I don’t currently see in sight or have) I can honestly say that 2017 has been the best year of my life (so far.)

Not because of any big or grand things I’ve experienced or accomplished. In many ways, this year looks much the same as years prior. Except for a few big things: Brandon and I moved back to Orange County, I fell madly in love with boardgames, and I started running (which reduced my anxiety and depression so much that this is the first year of my life I have ever felt like an almost normal human being.) The sheer happiness and freedom that running has given me has transformed me.

I’m not going to promise myself to climb any mountains, tackle any monsters, or change the world in a day. Rather, I’m going to recognize that life is not a paradigm shift, but a paradigm drift. Change doesn’t happen all at once, but slowly, over a long period of time. I don’t need to constantly paddle and battle the current with so much determination that I burn myself out; I can point my boat in the direction that I want to go, and let the river of life carry me there. I’m going to keep running, keep dreaming, and keep taking one step at time.