Tuesday Morning Coffee: Untitled

It’s one of those mornings: I don’t know what to write.

Everything I think of to write seems like a long diatribe of negativity, of complaining, because I don’t have a moral of the story. I want my blog to be a space where yes, I explore the messiness of my feelings and my voice, and also how I can learn and grow from that exploration. Today doesn’t seem like a day where there is much learning.

Do I write about the fact that I haven’t been sleeping well? I’m sleeping more poorly now than I did at the height of intensity and stress of recent work craziness. My mind races when I’m trying to drift off, it wakes me at 3:30am demanding attention, it’s spiraling into places that I haven’t seen in a while, grabbing onto the minutia of woulda-shoulda-coulda and tossing these bits over and over again until they seem like major catastrophes. I try to count breaths, getting only to about three before I realize I’m wandering again. And then, morning comes and I carry that ghost of a feeling that I didn’t quite sleep enough, that same feeling of being too tired to realize I’m tired that I get when I wake up early to go to the airport. This morning, that feeling resulted in shutting off the alarm and sleeping for another hour, before my mind’s restlessness drove me from bed and into the world.

Do I write about the fact that I’m still feeling lost? That mypost from two weeks agois still absolutely relevant today? I’m pushing along what I need to at work, there are places for me to plan and make some changes, but instead of a baseline of motivation and focus, it comes in waves. One moment I’ll be incredibly motivated to get something done or think about something new, and the next I’ll be opening Facebook for the gazillionth time, not even realizing I’m doing it until I’m scrolling through posts I’ve seen for the gazillionth time. The general feeling of malaise continues, resulting in me floating along, feeling like I’m going through the motions and being rather apathetic about my daily life. I do things that are fun, I do things I enjoy, but still missing is any sense of unadulterated joy and ease in those things. They give me a weak hit of pleasure, thankfully enough to give me something to be grateful for, and then I’m back to this baseline of meh. It’s a space I don’t know how to navigate: give me stress, give me sadness, I can identify and find tools to swim my way through those. But nothing? Moving through a vacuum is hard and I’m tired of it, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any way to move faster.

Do I write about the intensity of missing my dad this past week? He died three years ago on the first, and yet this past week may have been the hardest emotionally. I’ve had moments of feeling washing over me with a strength that hasn’t existed since that first year. I broke down on a run this weekend, which I haven’t done in years. I felt fifty pounds lighter afterwards, so perhaps I was releasing more than his memory, but the tears were triggered by missing him.

Do I write about being frightened that my current state of being is creating a wall that blocks out the people closest to me? That it’s hard to have lighthearted conversations but I feel like a burden to express any of what I’ve written in response to a simple “how are you?” I feel like I’m carrying all of my internal processing so close to the surface that I can’t focus on anything else. It makes all the work I’m doing on expressing myself and finding my voice and asking for what I want seem impossible, since I’m so worried about making people uncomfortable or feel pity for me or have to worry about me. The part of me that carries that stoic midwestern sensibility can’t show signs of weakness, has to be strong, has to just get through this. But I don’t feel strong, I feel fragile.

I’m now feeling like I don’t want to post this, that it feels depressing and heavy and just a dumping of my emotions that is better left to my therapist. But it’s too late to start another post and still make my morning meetings, and I don’t know what else I’d say. So, out into the world this goes.