I'm up at 3:30am and - instead of lying in bed with my eyes closed, trying to sleep, like I do most work nights - I'm leaning into it. I can tell I have a high level of anxiety in my body. And I haven't written in a while. Haven't been able to gather the brain power, but I'll speak on that more later (in a very belated birthday post). I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here and as such, this post might be more stream of consciousness than anything I would normally put on this blog. It's not even much about the song, even though I know it's the inspiration that's getting me writing this morning. It's a banger that I keep hearing on Instagram reels. I decided to hunt down and listen to the full version on Spotify - best decision I've made in the past couple hours, mos def.
In about 24 hours, I'll be on a plane to Houston to go see the My Chemical Romance concert. An event I've been looking forward to for the last two and a half years. I bought the tickets the day I found out I was pregnant with my youngest, who will turn two in about two weeks. Yep, you did the math right - the original concert was supposed to happen when I was about 9-months pregnant. And yes, I was fully intending to go, belly and all. I couldn't tell you what I was thinking that day, but I can tell you I had been panicking and crying a lot. For various reasons, most of which were my own fault. The Universe (and the COVID-19 pandemic) had other plans and the timing actually worked out in my favor. Now, the concert is more like a little vacation for me than an overnight trip. It's supposed to be relaxing. But I'm anxious - about leaving my children, about flying (which I haven't done in over three years - even though I love flying usually), about the hotel reservations, about whether these new-fangled digital tickets will work when I get to the door, about getting out of a concert late at night in a strange city, about not going to work (I have taken very little PTO since I started....8 months ago)...you get the idea. There's a level of restlessness in my body that's hard to handle. And even though I spent all yesterday cleaning and our rental house is the tidiest I've seen it since we moved in, I find myself finding small, meaningless tasks to occupy my hands.
I almost don't want to go, which is crazy. Not only did I (and my parents - the plane tickets were my birthday gift) spend a lot of money on this trip, but it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. I missed my chance when MCR was originally really big. I was in my late teens/early 20s and a broke college student - concerts weren't exactly in my budget, even though some really good ones passed through Pan-Am Center while I was at NMSU. And considering how much of my life has been dedicated to music, I don't go to concerts very often, and I wish I could. Adulthood, am I right? I can't stay home - I know I would regret it for the rest of my life. So, like I always do, I'm going to suck it up and push through, in spite of the anxiety and fear, because I have no other choice. I've never had any other choice.
The weird thing about being on a healing/spiritual journey (what...you thought I was writing about music?) is that I'm painfully aware of my patterns. This one - a term coined by Gay Hendricks in his book, "The Big Leap" - is an Upper Limit Problem. Essentially, when something good is happening in our life, we find ways to sabotage it because we've been conditioned that we don't deserve good things, we don't deserve happiness. Our mind manufactures drama to bring us down from the high, to "safe" emotional levels. Mind you, these emotional levels might not even really be safe - our standard emotional level may be chronic depression, addiction, suicidal ideation, self-destruction, or high-functioning anxiety. There are a lot of good things in my life right now and even though I don't have everything I want, there's a lot to be grateful for. I try to remind myself of that every morning - yes, I have a gratitude practice where I write down three things I'm grateful for daily. It's a practice I've kept up for 650+ days straight (according to my app) - I started it shortly after my youngest was born, when I was in the depths of PPD. It helps - I'm a much happier person than I was back then.
Which brings me to my Upper Limit Problem - I tend to get really anxious and fearful when I'm looking forward to something or I'm in a situation that makes me really happy. I know why this is - good things were always intertwined with anxiety and fear when I was growing up. Delicious food was always tainted with comments about my body or weight (same with nice, new clothes - hence why I don't often buy clothes for myself and certainly not the kind of clothes I want to wear); my dad being home would often mean overhearing scary arguments/fights and eventually, he would leave on deployment; a trip to Disneyland (or any other family vacation) could quickly turn south if my mom had a mood swing (which was pretty much every trip). I always got straight As, lead roles in theatre, solos in choir - but none of this ever came with praise. It barely even got attention, so if I seem weirded out by compliments and congratulations, it's because nothing I've ever done seemed to warrant it. The irony of my life is that I yearn to be seen and understood, yet actually getting what I want makes me deeply uncomfortable, even scared. And that leads to me downplaying it or fucking things up in some way. It's a large part of what stops me from seriously trying to publish my writing (a hurdle I'm still working through). And the truth is that - for a brief, shining moment in my life - I was able to forget some of those insecurities and fears. And I lost it, and I've been spending the last few years trying to get it back. A YouTube creator I follow explained the journey like a snow globe - if you want the pretty snow (or glitter), you have to be able to handle the shake-up. The shake-up is the hard part where you have to confront your triggers, fears, and insecurities and do the work to get past them. I suppose I'm still in the shake-up.
I've been listening to "She Knows" on repeat while I've been writing this. I said this post didn't really have anything to do with the song but, in it's own way, it describes the Upper Limit Problem. The singer is succeeding in one part of his life (his career) but totally messing up another part of his life (his relationship). He is so focused on his own stardom and playing a role - and he finds himself justifying the things he's doing. She knows....heck, she's probably even doing the same thing. Underneath it all, it's this very real fear that he doesn't deserve any of it - the career, the fame, the fortune, and a happy relationship. That he's not good enough for any of it, that he can't be what they want him to be.
I don't know if any of the above made sense but thanks for reading this rant. I feel better now.
"She Knows" Video
