Resilient

We’re all going to fall, and that’s why it’s important to know how to stand back up.

This past year was an unmitigated, wild ride. I’m not one of those people who will tell you that they’d do it all over again. The fact is, I would trade it for anything. Before this past year, I felt like I was on a good and positive trajectory. I was more sociable, less self conscious, I was reading good books, and meditating, but maybe it was all fool’s gold. Maybe my progress was an illusion, and all the good that I thought I was doing wasn’t real, but I’m trying not to be too hard on myself these days. It’s way too easy to be critical. All I know is that I went from polar opposites, from manic to depressive, in one fell swoop, and it was a nightmare trying to get back to a normal version of me.

Once more, I dove deep into myself, my absolute least favorite place to go. Despite what I frequently write on here about being honest and open, I kept what I was going through in-house, and decided that it was better that way. It’s a judgement call that I’ve made before, and it’s never worked to my benefit.

Honestly, it reminds me of the way that my anxiety works. My anxiety tells me that no matter how many times I’ve done something successfully, this will be the one time I fail. This felt like something similar, like this was the one time in the history of the world that keeping a big secret was actually going to make my life better. Here’s a hint: it did not.

I walked into tonight with nothing to post, not really sure what I wanted to cover. The word resilient popped into my head, and I’ve got some time before therapy, so I figured I would sit down and give it a shot, see what comes up. I promise I won’t delve too deeply into my experience of this past year, as I’m more interested in the recovery process that I’m going through. It’s strange to think of myself as in recovery, but I think that along with boundaries and integrity, all of these things will help guide me and keep me on the path that I want to be on, and that they’ll lead me to a place I want to go. At least, that’s the hope.

I’m a bit nervous, I would say. I’m about to dive headlong into the past year with my therapist, and really get into the details. And yet, it’s all a means to an end. I’m more interested in how I get back, how I reverse course, and how I stay away from where I was with every fiber of my being. I can look back now, and I know how I got to where I was, but what’s scary is when you go through something troubling, you often don’t see the signs, or you ignore them altogether.

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I told my therapist that I thought I was resilient, or that at least it was something I aspired to be.

Maybe I am resilient. Maybe the bigger life events just take longer to recover from. I have a feeling that we’re all more resilient than we like to believe that we are, that we’re all stronger than we believe we are. So many of us impose limitations on ourselves, and even I’m guilty of it. I remember saying at some point that I could never make it through another ALS diagnosis, but then my Dad got sick, and somehow, as a family, we all made it through. I wouldn’t say I made it through with flying colors, but I’m still writing this right now, and to me, that’s a victory.

I’m still here and still writing, and I’ve survived, but maybe I haven’t thrived. Not yet. I can’t seem to stop hitting setbacks, but I’m working at evening out the flow of my life, and making sure that if I become resilient, if that’s something that I achieve, that this time, it’s the real thing.

There is false resiliency in my opinion, the kind where you literally just keep going, despite all the signs that you should stop and take a breath. Sometimes we have to stop and hurt, process a little bit, and that’s okay. In a later post, I’ll talk about taking time to hurt, but as it pertains to right now, I think it’s all part of the process of being resilient. Sometimes it’s okay to feel things, to let ourselves be vulnerable, to really hurt, to accept what is happening. Sure, it’s absolutely terrifying, but that doesn’t mean we should steer away from it. I like to think I’ve grown so much as a result of accepting my circumstances.

So, how did I bounce back? Well, I haven’t yet. It’s not the self-correcting process I hoped that it would be. Rather than snap back into place like an elastic band, my recovery has been much more slow-moving, the kind of progress that’s hard-fought, the kind where you don’t know if on any given day if you’ve moved the needle at all. It would be easy to give up, but I know that I can’t do that. I know that I can’t go backward.

I know that I’ll make mistakes, but given some of the inspirational and motivational literature I’m reading, I’m trying to practice self love and compassion, rather than self flagellation. It’s not something I’m great at, and I’m much too comfortable calling myself an idiot. I’ve always been big into self deprecation. It’s my default setting, and so it’s not always easy to just turn something like that off. I know that I’ll need to if I’m to reach the goal I aspire to.

We don’t know how or when adverse events in our lives will take place, we only know that at some point they will. We can let ourselves be absolutely destroyed by them, or we can allow ourselves to feel, lean into the emotions and everything else that gets stirred up, and navigate the troubled waters. I’m slowly learning to swim, to continue the metaphor. It’s taking so much longer than I anticipated, but hopefully it will result in me becoming a more resilient version of myself. Thanks for reading.

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