There are experiences that move my mind in a new directions,shifting something that can't quite get pinned down. I can't help but want to hold onto the feeling, praying the welcome change sticks tightly into the hole in the dam holding back my onslaught of fear and anxiety.
It started with pasta. Now, body image and food are really big for me, and I've been "no carb" for far too long. I convinced myself pasta was off limits, bad, and that it meant failure. To fight this, I wanted push myself, with the help of friends, simply to eat it. Last night I ate linguine with shrimp for the first time in two years. All day I knew I was going to the chic pasta restaurant, and I kept pushing down the thoughts of obsession. It was a fight, but I did it. I made it to the meal. Once there, my friends were so interesting, the conversation so lively, the decor so beautiful and finally, the truffled shrimp pasta so delicious that my anxiety was drowned out by the experience of life.
I forgot why I was so nervous, so fearful, ... of life.
I know I can't turn off the rules, the worry, the rituals. Not in one night. But I can change the perspective slowly. What was a challenge, should be a treat. And it was a treat. The challenge comes in making all my scary moments like that great pasta dinner.
I have to realize- why do I have all these rules and standards of perfection? All they do is make living and loving that much harder, if not impossible. After all, I don't think I'm alive to sit alone, safe and surrounded by controlled perfection. I'm alive to make connections and feel emotion, good or bad.
It sounds easy and simple, but after 23 years of anxiety, rules and a big dosage of self-loathing, my brain is conditions to descend into that dark corner of control.
Well, I've seen what its light in the sunlight of a life free of rules. That sunny emotion is always fading behind clouds of fear, and it's right now it's hard work to make it stay. But now I know- I don't want to slip back into the shadows
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