Getting past “the stuck”

Ever get to a point in life where you are just… stuck?  Mentally, physically, emotionally…. just…. STUCK…

I have been there a few months now.  And I have to say, being stuck changes with age and circumstance.   It’s not the same for everyone, and it’s not the same every time, that is for damn sure.

I have been exploring this virtual stagnancy for a while.  Is it depression? Mid-life crisis? A RUT? or just a general, “I got nuthing” ….?

For me, it’s been like an abyss.  I haven’t done ANYTHING but get by for quite a while now.  No books, goals, projects, achievements….literally nothing.  YES, I have been busy.  Being busy is easy!  You just jump into who you were and go do stuff.  But this runs deeper and it’s been going on a little too long.

Yesterday I went for a walk to explore my thoughts on all this.  I have been making serious changes in my life (small but very significant) so that I can get outside myself and recover from this shit I am going through.  I realized that I have become self-absorbed a bit in that I am literally trying so hard to see myself and feel what I am feeling to try to get past it and it’s not working.  I have nothing driving me forward at all.  I’m a cog in a machine going through the motions every day, waking up realizing I am gonna do the same thing all over again… and I THINK therein lies the problem.

Many of us are creatures of routine.  Routine is not a bad thing, it’s what keeps us going most of the time.  But in my line of work (photography), I don’t really have a regular routine… and maybe that is the problem.  OR…rather, the routine that I am living is diving me deeper into my stuck making it harder to get out.

I remember when I was a very dramatic teenager (early teen years mostly, although I have always been dramatic)…I have been emotionally volatile since I can remember (kicked the baby swing on my head giving me stitches in my eyebrow before 2 yrs old), but the teen years are a whole fresh hell that I wasn’t prepared for.

There is something about your teen years where you wake up and start looking around at everyone else.  I remember in elementary school (100 yrs ago) I lived a life of bliss.  Everyone was the same, you had your friends and you did your playdates and you didn’t think about much.  But then, middle school (or Jr. High as we called it), I will never forget looking around at all the people and realizing there were different ‘classes’ of people and different cliques etc…and all of a sudden, I didn’t fit in the same way anymore.  I started looking at other girls who were skinny and realizing I was not a small girl.  I really hated this time in life.

I found myself withdrawing more.  I was never one to “keep up with the Joneses” so it was easier to just dismiss myself.  I lived over the wall from an orange grove and I spent MANY a days in there living my own life being dramatic in my head and doing my best to get by and be as small in the world as possible (existentially, not physically per se).

I find in my adult life, I still resort to the same thing… escaping for a bit to collect myself.

When I was a teen, I remember feeling at times like I was 6 feet under and looking up at everyone else who were seemingly soaring above the sky in their lives.  Lo and behold, we all have our own issues in life, but that is what I saw and it made it very hard to get out of my hole to be a part of anything.  I never forgot that analogy of being in a hole …and isn’t that 6 ft a significant depth as that is what a coffin is “allegedly” buried at, even though it’s actually closer to 4… but I digress…  My point is, if you looked up “Dramatic” in the dictionary … you may see my picture….

Fast forward back to today… I can’t go where I am going without looking back sometimes.  After all, we are all the sum of the lives we have lived and our actions are very much based on who we were as well as who we are… As I sit in my stuck and think back to that “6 ft”, I realize I kind of feel there now and I’m kind of sure, but not totally sure of what put me there.  Now here is the upside… for all the times I have felt 6 ft under, I have a 100% success rate of getting myself out … and I have no doubt that I will get there again, but this time it’s just lingering and as I feel no sense of anything, I find it hard to summon the motivation to get out.  On yesterdays walk I realized that I’m starting to throw the dirt on myself and that shit needs to stop.

Somewhere along the way I stopped feeling gratitude for all I have.  When you are in a low vibrational place it’s easy to forget the good you have.  AND…it’s easy to keep burying yourself when people can’t see that you are going down because all your posts and pictures seem well enough or even upbeat.  But the truth is we are all fighting some battle no matter how big or small that others are completely unaware of.  And I mean, who wants to actually drag others down with our sorrows, because we all have our problems to deal with so we suffer in silence, which is no bueno.

I think I am lucky because I have no issue airing my wares (as my mom would say) to the masses.   My goal in my writing is always that I want people to know they are NEVER alone and as I write my misgivings in life, I usually find at least one person who is grateful that they are not alone.

SOOOOOO I write about my stuck and I share it with the world that it may spark something in someone who needs a little commiseration.

I will find my way out of my stuck.  I have already started making small changes and eventually I will rise again.  I just need time to ‘go back to the orchard’ and find myself.

In the meantime…I will post my happy moments in the day with the hopes that the smiles I post will eventually come back to my eyes.  As Mom always said, “This too shall pass”…  Hoping it’s sooner rather than later…