2018: Glad that’s over…

Ready to make your New Year’s Resolutions? Will 2019 be your year finally? ‘Cause let’s face it – 2018 doesn’t seem to have done many of us any favors. If you believe the memes, everyone else thinks so, too. The picture quality sucks, but I’m a big fan of this one:

On the flip side, I see tons of people sharing their happies on social media, and that makes me both smile and roll my eyes simultaneously. I do love a good paradox. Delightful. Good for you folks.

So, yeah. 2018. Dunno about you, but it kicked me in the ribs. Not that 2016 and 2017 were all that kind, either, but ’16 was more of a kick to the heart and ’17 was a kick to the brain. Ribs aren’t so bad then. Better than sweeping the leg and causing a total washout.

Not that it’s been all bad. I ain’t whining or anything. Been downtown now for about 18 months. I’ve met a lot of great people and I’ve gotten to explore the 38103 in a way I never imagined. Screwed up a bunch along the way, but don’t regret the move. About the only regret I might have is spending too much money in Bardog, but the food’s just too damn good.

Well, that’s not true. ‘Cause I’ve got tons of regrets, but I’m working on ’em. Getting down here was so messy. And those people all the time talking about living life with no regrets? I mean, good in theory, but that really just makes you a jackhole that folks merely tolerate because you’ve got something they want.

Regret. Remorse. Reinvention.

I guess that’s kinda what my takeaway from this year is. It’s where I want to go from here with this blog thing. I write in a journal almost daily. Mostly just ranting to get stuff out of my head, try and find some quiet up there, but it appears that we’re all looking for that. We’ve all been through some pretty tremendous crap it seems, and I know at least my therapy bill is through the roof. (No shame. Go get shrunk if you need to.) I guess I kinda hope to make this an extension of that process.

Because I find myself angry a lot now, which is actually kinda new for me. Like, so new that when other people got angry around me, I looked at them crooked ’cause I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. I always just choked anger down because I didn’t want to hurt others’ feelings or burden them with my emotional response to a situation. Thought anger was immature, even. Like grow up and be grateful your issues aren’t worse ’cause I promise, they sure as hell can be.

But I learned about this thing (emotion? idea?) called “righteous anger” this year. Ever heard of it? It’s basically permission to let something that should rightfully piss you off do just that. And then you handle it like a grownup and move on with your life. But see, for years, I didn’t know what that meant. Any of it.

And now that I’m up to speed with that whole concept, I’ve realized, mostly, I’m pretty mad at myself. So now I’m on a quest to do something about that.

Denial: Survival of the Fittest

Growing up, I perfected this amazing talent to survive: Denial. Maybe you’ve heard of it? I had this whole system in place I didn’t even know I had. This has been an awesome discovery, of course. #sarcasm

Cristian Newman

But it was more complicated than that. Found myself in a place where my “normal” got to be so sideways that the lens I viewed the world through completely screwed me. Worse than my own suffering, my worldview hurt the people I care about most. Well, the person. My person.

And that’s a miserable feeling. Real talk. To the frustration (and often destruction) of my people, I didn’t get it. Not for a lack of trying. I’ve been hardcore facing my demons for over a year solid now. And sure, a year isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things, and there’s a lot left to do, but I’m an obsessive type, so I’m out there all hands on and taking no prisoners.

What sucks worse is when you don’t even realize what you’re doing and how it effects others. I didn’t realize that I was the toxic one. Not too long ago, after an argument with the BFF that left me in another one of those introspective dark caves just prime for overthinking, I had a revelation. He’d been frustrated with me for awhile for “defending” or “justifying” these insane things I’d done, and I kept trying to say, “No! That’s not what this is!” because in my head, I wasn’t trying to justify or defend or excuse behaviors. I agree with him. He’s right. My past has been a hot mess.

But in my thinking cave, tears streaming down my face in frustration because I couldn’t explain what was going up in my lobe, I finally saw it for what it was. I was normalizing it. On no planet was I trying to say I was right and he was wrong. I was crying out in exasperation, “This is all I know!”

And that’s miserable. It’s miserable to realize that the only thing you’ve ever known is the thing that’s breaking the heart of the only person you’ve ever really loved more than yourself. I always wanted someone in my life who’d call me on my crazy, even though I had no clue what that meant. I’ve always known something was “off,” even though I’ve never had a clue what that meant. I had no clue that I was the one causing my suffering.

Hey there, righteous anger.

Rewriting. Reprogramming. Redirection. Renewal.

These days, I sometimes don’t even recognize myself in the mirror — in the best ways. My BFF, hit hardest by all my disillusion, said something to me a few weeks ago that really resonated. Told me he finally realized that I was trying to reprogram almost four decades of living a certain way when I didn’t even know there was another way to do it. I’ve been trying like hell to do all that as fast as possible in a period of roughly a year or so, and bless him, he gave me credit for how difficult that’s been. The ratio was most certainly not in my favor.

I cried. In public. Thank god someone really gets it.

Y’all. It’s exhausting. It’s frustrating. It will break your heart. You’ll be pissed that you didn’t see/change/fix things sooner. You’ll be mad at yourself for that (among a million other things) and you’ll take it out unintentionally on other people because you’re projecting or burying yourself in their crap so that you don’t face your own.

The hardest part about it all is that you can work so damn hard and put in all that effort, and you just feel like you’re spinning your wheels because you don’t even know what you’re supposed to be working through because this is the only “normal” you’ve ever known. Imagine being in a pitch black room searching for a light switch when you don’t even know what electricity is. You just know that surely there’s something around here that will help you see, even though you literally have no idea what you’re looking for. It’s like that.

And you’ll sit there on that little couch in your therapist’s she-shed just recapping your youth and you’ll watch her eyes grow big and her mouth part in this half-shock/half-terror expression and you’ll interrupt your story to ask, “What?” …because you understand the expression, but you don’t understand why she’s making it.

Then she’ll realize her face has contorted and she’ll rejoin you in the World of the Shrinking and apologize when she doesn’t need to because you two are cool like that after all this time and you picked her because you were tired of people BS’ing you. Rainbows and unicorns up your butt and all.

She’ll just take a slow inhale and ask you, “…do you not see that that’s seriously messed up?”

And you’ll kinda stare at her, head a little sideways like a confused dog, and you’ll tear up because you know she’s right but you’re not really sure how and all you’ll have to say in response is, “Well… no. Not really. It’s all I’ve ever known.”

Righteous anger. Process it.

New Year’s Resolutions

They’re stupid. They’re a way to just set yourself up to be disappointed when you inevitably fail because life happens or the goal was too lofty or you didn’t make a tangible action plan to accomplish any of that crap. I don’t do ’em.

So instead, I’m making a list of lessons learned from the past year or so, and I’m vowing to put them into practice every time they’re necessary from now on. Maybe they’re common sense to some. Considering where I’m coming from, they’re new to me. Maybe they’re new to you, too. If so, I hope this helps.

1. Anxiety sucks. The shakes suck. Panic attacks suck. Worrying sucks. It’s all fear, which also sucks. Abandonment. Failure. The future. Blah blah blah. Know what? Doesn’t matter. People come and go. Appreciate them while they’re here and love them enough to let them leave if that’s what they want. Failure happens. Accept it and learn from it. The future? Can’t do anything about that in the present except work towards what you want. Stop freaking out about where you think you should be going and appreciate where you’re at (and what you went through to get here). Get professional help if you need it.
2. Control is an illusion. There ain’t a damn thing in this world you can control outside of yourself. Stop trying. Don’t manipulate a conversation, situation, or person to try and make things what I want them to be. Save your energy for healthier things.
3. Boundaries. Have ’em. Respect others’. Don’t waiver on yours and sacrifice your health. Don’t test others’ and make a hot mess. That’s a jacked-up way to live and it’s not fair to anyone.
4. Real talk. Have it with yourself often. Don’t let others BS you and don’t BS yourself. No one’s living their best, most beautiful life covered in poop and lies.
5. Own your actions and your words. Sincerely apologize for both/either whenever necessary. Make a real plan to change the behavior so it doesn’t happen again. You can’t say you love someone you’re not willing to do that for.
6. Timetables. Just because I move faster, obsess longer, push harder doesn’t mean anyone else does or should. We’ve all got our own timing. We’ve all got our own reasons for that. We’re all out here trying to do the best we can. If someone’s timetable doesn’t work with mine, then I a) need to recognize I can’t and won’t control that and b) can make the choice to wait or go, thanking them for their time in my life.
7. Be honest. Always and completely. Only person you hurt in the end when you’re not is yourself. Lying is selfish.
8. But why? Cry me a river. I’ve lived my whole life determined to know the whys and hows of every little thing. Thought I couldn’t treat the symptom if I didn’t understand the disease. In medicine? Sure. That’s pretty darn useful. In personal growth? Meh. What’s my problem right now? How do I fix that? Sometimes, you can just treat the symptom. “Work the problem,” as my sage BFF would say. If I stumble across the why in the middle of that, then bonus.

Like this guy… I went out for a smoke off my third-floor breezeway, and here’s this guy tied to something on the building across the alley, also three stories up. I don’t know why. I’d love to know how the hell he got there. Instead, though, I just laughed and filmed it.

Enjoy the Peeping GingerTom and Happy New Year. Here’s to making real changes.

Featured Image “2018 New Year Sparkler Writing” photo by Nicole De Khors from Burst