Am I screwing this up?

My life is tanking. Crashing. I am in the middle of a life-crash. I’d say it was a midlife crisis but I haven’t bought a Harley Davidson and don’t have a beard. Also, I’m not actually in the middle of my life.

I haven’t talked about this with people really. I’ve gone about my business with as much in the way of smiles as I can provide. Mostly I’ve tried to avoid people because I discovered that when your life is midway through a crash, you get very sensitive and easily start making embarrassing scenes in public. I found this out yesterday during my one-to-one art class thing and ranted at the teacher when he said something that really got under my skin. My skin, right now, is paper-thin, emotionally-speaking.

I also haven’t blogged about it, mostly because I felt I had to keep appearances in some kind of order, look like I had it All Worked Out, or at least knew to some extent what I was doing. I haven’t really wanted to talk to anybody about it because when you do, you tend to get one of two reactions.

The first reaction involves staring at you with an expression on a spectrum between fear and horror. Most of the people I know in real life live their lives in a manner that’s utterly different to mine. Sometimes I go through things that they’ve gone out of their way to avoid. It’s hard having to face those things when it’s somebody you know. They don’t want to know – if they were honest, that’s what they’d say. They don’t want to know. It’s big, and it’s scary.

The second reaction is the sudden stream of advice. Being told I “should” do this or I “should” do that or outright telling me I’m getting it completely wrong. I don’t want advice. I especially don’t want to be told I’m getting it wrong. I will work it out for myself. I’ll find a solution, I’ll get through this, I know I will because I’ve been through so much and therefore I know I can come up with my own resolution.

Really all I want is somebody just to nod, listen and tell me it’s OK to feel like I want to stand around screaming at the top of my lungs until the neighbours either complain or move out. A hand to hold while I work all this out. It’s my job, my thing to work it out for myself. I’ll know when my inner compass tells me to move, to do, to act. It’s just scary in this space, you know?

Truth is, I’ve been in this space before. Cornered, unable to really work a way out, because my life is pointing very definitely in one direction, and all my beliefs about life, my survival systems, my map of reality utterly disagree with what’s happening and can’t find a way out. This is a life crash. When your whole way of being collapses and you suddenly wake up thinking not just “What the fuck am I doing?” but “Who the fuck am I anyway?”

Five and a half years ago I was severely anorexic, and had been for about fifteen years by that point. I was also in a relationship that was collapsing, trapped in a house I didn’t want to live in, aware that actually I didn’t want to do what I was doing anymore. Total re-start required. That was the point where I showed up at my doctor’s surgery, said I wasn’t going to take any more medication, and would quit being anorexic, starting immediately. I did it. That’s what it took: a decision to live in a different way. A month later I was normal weight and I could eat. All the symptoms of my supposedly permanent disorder evaporated.

It took a few months of trying to get all my old systems to work it out, trying to starve, trying to kill myself, trying to get back into therapy, for me to get to that point, though. I say all of this because it’s proof of one thing: that I will eventually work it out, and move on. Just right now, it’s hard to believe that. Right now, it’s a lot of waking up every morning going “What the hell is this?”

I feel like a car with a maximum speed of 85, currently trying to hold it together at 150. That’s a lot of rattling, shaking, things flying off the side. “Was that the muffler just then?” “Oh, yeah, I can see it back on the road there…”

I’ve learned a lot in five years about coping with this kind of thing happening to me. Now’s the time for putting all of those things into action. I want to go on learning and learning and pretending until I wake up one day and it’s actually too late, I’m in the hospital with alzheimer’s and there’s no way back. At some point you have to start using the techniques and the skills and stop hiding under the duvet. This is the point I’m at. Life is kind of pissed because I’ve been doing a good job of duvet residence (damnit, I have two duvets, that’s how good I am at this!). I notice that the more I try to hide the harder life kicks back.

There’s no conclusion to this post. If you read it on my WordPress blog you won’t be able to comment, but comments are open back here on Posterous. I’m scared of doing this, of opening up in this way, but it’s a relief to write it all down somewhere. Thanks for reading.