hey there,
So now I've made it more public letting go of my theatre company and it feels quite vulnerable and like i've given in to the forces of darkness or something. like I'm Cool Hand Luke and this time just gave up on the fight, so it's not a fun feeling.
I am continuing my writing, which is good, but also overwhelmed with how much I still have to learn in this arena. i've written one kind of thing and now doing something else, stretching way past a comfort zone so that feels vulnerable and scary too.
and i'm realizing again that of course being vulnerable, really being vulnerable is scary and uncomfortable. I think I used to believe in some kind of controlled vulnerability or something, but that's bullshit. So I am really out here now, really feeling naked and like I'm in one of those horrible dreams where you can't remember your lines or are naked or don't know what to do, except it's real. Scary.
I have had a huge realization though in the midst of all this massive uncomfortableness...(otherwise known in the English language as discomfort, but there you go...I'm such a writer...hmpf)...
- pause for skype conversation with husband in yet another foreign city - and back:
so the realization - is that the reason I ended up here in a place as weird as the UK, if you happen to be American and a writer and therefore used to a certain idiom that then makes no sense where you happen to live now, etc., etc...- is that I needed to get to the place I am now: no props or lighting effects to show me in a certain light of my choosing so you can like me and affirm me in a certain way, etc. In other words, it's up to me to generate my own oxygen. I think traditionally people have this realization when they are approximately 2 1/2 years old. I'm just 45 years late is all. There are reasons for that, but the fact is I missed that crucial stage of development and whilst embarrassed it's taken this long I'm relieved it's happened at all. This means perhaps I don't have to live my life as an unconscious codependent and can allow things to fall as they may...and that means me as well as other people.
There's a slogan in AA (there are lots of them and they sound dumb but they hide wisdom weirdly enough...) 'Live and let live.' I got the 'let live' part ages ago but I forgot the 'live' part, and so the 'letting live' was happening in bad faith with an unconscious wish for the person I was so 'generously' letting live to help me live. None of this was overt, stated or in any way asked for by me, except in this really underhanded (even to myself) way...this is the tricky bit about denial. It's actually denial. You don't know it until you know it. Scary shit. I find it excruciatingly embarrassing that it happens when I'm sober as well. OK, if you're drunk or officially a mess, but sober, in therapy and 'recovery', meditating, doing yoga, you name it and STILL this nonsense...but there you go. I think it may be called being human, but I also think in my case this change is crucial, and I am grateful for the realization.
So thank you UK for leaving me here bereft of my props, lighting, sound effects and clever little tricks... it's fucking scary but now I have a bat's chance of actually living. Life begins at 47 or whatever...
OK, got to get ready for yoga now. I hate going but I always feel better when I've done it...
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