Road work.
Do you know what "road work" is? Its a boxing term. It refers to the need of the fighter to build endurance and the, hopefully now, antiquated method of doing so by hitting the pavement and running behind a car or bike.
The whole point of road work is that it sucks. It really starts when it gets hard. Then, you are just logging miles. No thrill of fighting, no glamor of hitting someone. No breaks, just grinding out road work. It just needs to get done.
----
Illness, prolonged illness, and probably particularly mental illness, can break your self confidence. In my case, lets use the word shattered. There it was one day, full of self awareness, piss and vinegar, what I could do and where my weaknesses were; pretty healthy for a 22, 23 year old. Illness systematically, unrepentantly and unrelentingly dismantled that self confidence. When it was done with my self confidence, it whittled down my self respect until it was all but gone. Self esteem was an appetizer. What the illness really had to focus on to break was hope. But it too fell, broken and ridiculed.
Maybe the hardest part was that I was not an old man. I looked and sounded healthy to people who did not look to closely. A law student, tall handsome, able, everyone assumed I was having an enviable experience. Except I wasnt. I was clinging to sanity and spending days doing fun things like collecting my own feces and crying into a pillow. Really good times.
But we have gone over that before and shall not indulge again...right now.
this journal is about illness and recovery from illness. Usually I concentrate on the physical aspects of that. But picking up the pieces, rebuilding self esteem, self respect, self confidence are a big part. Perhaps more important right now. Especially when almost no one knew you were/are ill. You are not cut the slack that, perhaps, a cancer survivor might get. But cancer survivors have enough horrors, and this is not about them, its about what I am doing to deal with some of the mind part of the body/mind equation when approaching wellness.
Well, this journey, reaching a crescendo now, began a while ago. For those of you desperate or kind enough to have been following this blog back when I started it might remember, there were days so given over to preoccupation about healing that I was, as my father says- an animal- head down adn ass up. It was pure survival. While effective, there is little dignity in it and I was just wallowing, going through the motions of being a human being.
But then, and its not clear which day, but my wellness, climbing since the PTC, rose over the illness and I could see the valleys of life and possibility spread out before me. It was staggering. Still, it took me a long time to get out of survival mode and to reestablish myself. I was, you see, interrupted.
There are many things that happened along the way, but since this entry is about self confidence and redeeming myself in my own eyes, I will begin with the most notable turn. Now, I had known since the beginning that law was not for me. Not big firm law. Just a bad fit. Still, it was a steady paycheck and not too difficult, even when, technically, insane. Thats not bravado, its simple that it was almost, just barely, too difficult, but I was able to pull it off.
I remember crawling out of the murk. I remember one day thinking, "wow, I really have not bought music in years". Music, so important to me, the soundtrack of my life, and it had sat dormant for years, my appreciation putrefying. You see even an animal ceases to take care of itself when it is sick. Cats need the vet when they dont wash, and I need something when I am not listening to music.
Well, one day in Boston, I bought some albums, some of them sucked, some of them were amazing, but it was a declaration that it was time to reemerge.
Soon enough, I left my job. It was just time to go. It was a question of getting confidence that I could make it outside. It was also feeling ready to define myself and translate that into the world. I took a job in a restaurant. I read a lot, and thought and spent time not saying no to things that scared me. Feeling brave, I began my career search. not a job search, career search. I decided it would take a year. It took a little more than that, but we unraveled it. It was frustrating at first. I borrowed "what color is your parachute" from V, thanks V, and went to work with the excersizes. I found I was even lying to myself about what I liked and prefered. After a couple months clearing tables and drinking absinthe until 3 am, I was clearer. Clear. Recentered. from there, I saw the outlines of me and what was going to make me happy. I was giddy but unsure.
Well, I made dramatic choices. I chose to move to CA. This is a big deal. I have moved 11 times previously and never for me. Always there was a reason. Well, it was scary, but CA was where I was to go. And I found a job and moved. Thats a big deal. Boston, while great, was somewhere I moved for someone else. Because I lacked the self confidence to end a relationship that was not going any where, I just let it happen to me. I rolled with it and let myself be angry. Well, this was different. It was affirmative, it took courage, it took confidence that it was the right decision. Lord knows I agonized, but I did it. me. Mine.
Well, CA was all about capitalizing on that. Still, it was clear that we were only making steps. Maybe the hard work was done in some regards, but in others, we had hardly begun, the road work.
I call my studio "the lab". Its for experiments in lifestyle design. Its for experiments and it acknowledges that sometimes experiments fail, and that's ok.
A lot has gone on in this lab. recently, things have started to make more sense. It took a rough rough awakening to get there, and the graciousness of a friend to kick me in the ass and another to kick me in the head. M today said to me "Why do I need to yell before you hear me? It sounds like you have this affect on people".
Yeah, M, yeah.
A bit ago, J challenged me in a way I am only getting now. She demanded that I stop hiding behind easy excuses and cop outs. She got in my face and told me that I had to confront myself in all my naked imperfection if I had a chance to stay with her or even really become a serviceable human being. I told her it was hard to be a mess when she was taking the seat above that. She said tough, get used to it, thats the way it was. it galled, but it makes sense now.
Regaining your self confidence means confronting your insecurities. First, knowing them, then admitting they are there, then working through them, wearing them down every day, working with your friends, family and lovers, if you are lucky. It cannot be done in a vacuum.
I have a lot of insecurities. We can acknowledge the ones that come from the illness on this blog and it stays on topic. Neat trick huh?
What if it comes back?
Am I deserving of love if I am ill?
Will I be pitied?
What if I get no better? Do I still deserve to be taken seriously? What can I possible contribute? What do I bring that makes me special and worth someone's time?
How will I provide for myself?
What if I need other people? (I do.)
What if someone loves me and I get sick again. Am I still a man?
What if I am left stupid?
So, thats the gist. In the immortal words of Matt Damon "Let the healing begin"
I am also spending time identifying what I like about me. For example, I am kind, and creative, courageous, I have vision, and I am passionate. I am identifying things for which I have passion. Surfing. writing to you all. polo, strangely. Baseball. They are mine and I take some sense of me from them.
I am hard on myself. But I am getting less so. I am demanding better treatment and cutting out of my life people that dont give anything back, or take more than they give. Its all related.
So I am pretty exhausted right now. its been a rough day. I have confronted a lot, and realized things that I wanted to be so angry about and which I thought were so unfair and mean, were nothing but tearing away the self deciept I was using to protect myself from growing. I am more well than I acknowledge and there is no reason to sit here.
I am sorry. I dont know that you will read this but you were right. All of it. Most of it. You were right about me needing to hurry up, that I was being indulgent. You were right about me not facing it dead on. You were right about me being childish and ridiculous and hiding behind excuses and old bad patterns and being a victim. You were right that I need help. You were right that only staying with it 100% is the right thing to do. You were right that I circled around it and made you the scape goat. You are right that I was angry at you for having tghe self confidence that I lacked and I childishly tried to rip it down to my level to make myself feel better. I was jealous of your health and confidence and self esteem and I lashed out at it all, and felt sorry for myself.
I realized the extent to which I resented others wellness and stability, but how I would not put in the work to get there. how I wanted to be around broken people, or people that I cowed and impressed. I didnt want the challenge. except I do. I am drawn to it. If it hurts, I will stick with it. Yeah, Ill get mad, but I stay with it. its why I am well. I never give up on wellness and I am not afriad to look stupid and fall down if it means I will soon stand up straight and tall.
but I am building my own and I am not so far away as I thought.
Head down, keep pounding out those miles. It starts when it hurts.
The healing of the mind. May you all face this horribleness.
The whole point of road work is that it sucks. It really starts when it gets hard. Then, you are just logging miles. No thrill of fighting, no glamor of hitting someone. No breaks, just grinding out road work. It just needs to get done.
----
Illness, prolonged illness, and probably particularly mental illness, can break your self confidence. In my case, lets use the word shattered. There it was one day, full of self awareness, piss and vinegar, what I could do and where my weaknesses were; pretty healthy for a 22, 23 year old. Illness systematically, unrepentantly and unrelentingly dismantled that self confidence. When it was done with my self confidence, it whittled down my self respect until it was all but gone. Self esteem was an appetizer. What the illness really had to focus on to break was hope. But it too fell, broken and ridiculed.
Maybe the hardest part was that I was not an old man. I looked and sounded healthy to people who did not look to closely. A law student, tall handsome, able, everyone assumed I was having an enviable experience. Except I wasnt. I was clinging to sanity and spending days doing fun things like collecting my own feces and crying into a pillow. Really good times.
But we have gone over that before and shall not indulge again...right now.
this journal is about illness and recovery from illness. Usually I concentrate on the physical aspects of that. But picking up the pieces, rebuilding self esteem, self respect, self confidence are a big part. Perhaps more important right now. Especially when almost no one knew you were/are ill. You are not cut the slack that, perhaps, a cancer survivor might get. But cancer survivors have enough horrors, and this is not about them, its about what I am doing to deal with some of the mind part of the body/mind equation when approaching wellness.
Well, this journey, reaching a crescendo now, began a while ago. For those of you desperate or kind enough to have been following this blog back when I started it might remember, there were days so given over to preoccupation about healing that I was, as my father says- an animal- head down adn ass up. It was pure survival. While effective, there is little dignity in it and I was just wallowing, going through the motions of being a human being.
But then, and its not clear which day, but my wellness, climbing since the PTC, rose over the illness and I could see the valleys of life and possibility spread out before me. It was staggering. Still, it took me a long time to get out of survival mode and to reestablish myself. I was, you see, interrupted.
There are many things that happened along the way, but since this entry is about self confidence and redeeming myself in my own eyes, I will begin with the most notable turn. Now, I had known since the beginning that law was not for me. Not big firm law. Just a bad fit. Still, it was a steady paycheck and not too difficult, even when, technically, insane. Thats not bravado, its simple that it was almost, just barely, too difficult, but I was able to pull it off.
I remember crawling out of the murk. I remember one day thinking, "wow, I really have not bought music in years". Music, so important to me, the soundtrack of my life, and it had sat dormant for years, my appreciation putrefying. You see even an animal ceases to take care of itself when it is sick. Cats need the vet when they dont wash, and I need something when I am not listening to music.
Well, one day in Boston, I bought some albums, some of them sucked, some of them were amazing, but it was a declaration that it was time to reemerge.
Soon enough, I left my job. It was just time to go. It was a question of getting confidence that I could make it outside. It was also feeling ready to define myself and translate that into the world. I took a job in a restaurant. I read a lot, and thought and spent time not saying no to things that scared me. Feeling brave, I began my career search. not a job search, career search. I decided it would take a year. It took a little more than that, but we unraveled it. It was frustrating at first. I borrowed "what color is your parachute" from V, thanks V, and went to work with the excersizes. I found I was even lying to myself about what I liked and prefered. After a couple months clearing tables and drinking absinthe until 3 am, I was clearer. Clear. Recentered. from there, I saw the outlines of me and what was going to make me happy. I was giddy but unsure.
Well, I made dramatic choices. I chose to move to CA. This is a big deal. I have moved 11 times previously and never for me. Always there was a reason. Well, it was scary, but CA was where I was to go. And I found a job and moved. Thats a big deal. Boston, while great, was somewhere I moved for someone else. Because I lacked the self confidence to end a relationship that was not going any where, I just let it happen to me. I rolled with it and let myself be angry. Well, this was different. It was affirmative, it took courage, it took confidence that it was the right decision. Lord knows I agonized, but I did it. me. Mine.
Well, CA was all about capitalizing on that. Still, it was clear that we were only making steps. Maybe the hard work was done in some regards, but in others, we had hardly begun, the road work.
I call my studio "the lab". Its for experiments in lifestyle design. Its for experiments and it acknowledges that sometimes experiments fail, and that's ok.
A lot has gone on in this lab. recently, things have started to make more sense. It took a rough rough awakening to get there, and the graciousness of a friend to kick me in the ass and another to kick me in the head. M today said to me "Why do I need to yell before you hear me? It sounds like you have this affect on people".
Yeah, M, yeah.
A bit ago, J challenged me in a way I am only getting now. She demanded that I stop hiding behind easy excuses and cop outs. She got in my face and told me that I had to confront myself in all my naked imperfection if I had a chance to stay with her or even really become a serviceable human being. I told her it was hard to be a mess when she was taking the seat above that. She said tough, get used to it, thats the way it was. it galled, but it makes sense now.
Regaining your self confidence means confronting your insecurities. First, knowing them, then admitting they are there, then working through them, wearing them down every day, working with your friends, family and lovers, if you are lucky. It cannot be done in a vacuum.
I have a lot of insecurities. We can acknowledge the ones that come from the illness on this blog and it stays on topic. Neat trick huh?
What if it comes back?
Am I deserving of love if I am ill?
Will I be pitied?
What if I get no better? Do I still deserve to be taken seriously? What can I possible contribute? What do I bring that makes me special and worth someone's time?
How will I provide for myself?
What if I need other people? (I do.)
What if someone loves me and I get sick again. Am I still a man?
What if I am left stupid?
So, thats the gist. In the immortal words of Matt Damon "Let the healing begin"
I am also spending time identifying what I like about me. For example, I am kind, and creative, courageous, I have vision, and I am passionate. I am identifying things for which I have passion. Surfing. writing to you all. polo, strangely. Baseball. They are mine and I take some sense of me from them.
I am hard on myself. But I am getting less so. I am demanding better treatment and cutting out of my life people that dont give anything back, or take more than they give. Its all related.
So I am pretty exhausted right now. its been a rough day. I have confronted a lot, and realized things that I wanted to be so angry about and which I thought were so unfair and mean, were nothing but tearing away the self deciept I was using to protect myself from growing. I am more well than I acknowledge and there is no reason to sit here.
I am sorry. I dont know that you will read this but you were right. All of it. Most of it. You were right about me needing to hurry up, that I was being indulgent. You were right about me not facing it dead on. You were right about me being childish and ridiculous and hiding behind excuses and old bad patterns and being a victim. You were right that I need help. You were right that only staying with it 100% is the right thing to do. You were right that I circled around it and made you the scape goat. You are right that I was angry at you for having tghe self confidence that I lacked and I childishly tried to rip it down to my level to make myself feel better. I was jealous of your health and confidence and self esteem and I lashed out at it all, and felt sorry for myself.
I realized the extent to which I resented others wellness and stability, but how I would not put in the work to get there. how I wanted to be around broken people, or people that I cowed and impressed. I didnt want the challenge. except I do. I am drawn to it. If it hurts, I will stick with it. Yeah, Ill get mad, but I stay with it. its why I am well. I never give up on wellness and I am not afriad to look stupid and fall down if it means I will soon stand up straight and tall.
but I am building my own and I am not so far away as I thought.
Head down, keep pounding out those miles. It starts when it hurts.
The healing of the mind. May you all face this horribleness.
posted by warnerk | 10:27 PM
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